STONYHURSr PHILOSOPHICAL SERIES 



MORAL PHILOSOPHY 



ETHICS, DEONTOLOGY AND NATURAL LAW. 



JOSEPH RICKABY, SJ., 

M.A. LOND. ; B.Sc. OXON. 



FOURTH EDITION. 



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Westmonasterii, die 22 Julii, 1918 



"7^ 



PREFACE (1905). 



For fifteen years this Manual has enjoyed all the 
popularity that its author could desire. With that 
popularity the author is the last person to wish to 
5 interfere. Therefore, not to throw previous copies 
) out of use, this edition makes no alteration either in 
the pagination or the text already printed. At the 
same time the author might well be argued to have 
lapsed into strange supineness and indifference to 
moral science, if in fifteen years he had learnt ^ 
nothing new, and found nothing in his work which 
he wished to improve. Whoever will be at the 
expense of purchasing my Political and Moral Essays 
l^:^ (Benziger, 1902, 6s.) will find in the first essay on 
the Origin and Extent of Civil Authority an advan- 
tageous substitute for the chapter on the State in 
this work. The essay is a dissertation written for 
the degree of B. Sc. in the University of Oxford ; 
and represents, I hope, tolerably well the best 
contemporary teaching on the subject. 

If the present work had to be rewritten, I should 
make a triple division of Moral Philosophy, into 
Ethics, Deontology (the science of to hiov, i.e., of 



vi 



PREFACE. 



what ought to be done), and Natural Law. For if 
the principal business of Ethics is to determine 
what moral obligation is " (p. 2), then the classical 
work on the subject, the Nicomachean Ethics of 
Aristotle, is as the play of Hamlet with the character 
of Hamlet left out : for in that work there is no 
analysis of moral obligation, no attempt to fix the 
comprehension of the idea I ought*' (ib.)- The 
system there exposed is a system of Eudaemonism, 
not of Deontology. It is not a treatise on Dut}^ 
but on Happiness : it tells us what Happiness, or 
rational well-being, is, and what conduct is condu- 
cive to rational well-being. It may be found 
convenient to follow Aristotle, and avov/ that the 
business of Ethics is not Duty, not Obligation, not 
Law, not Sanction, but Happiness. That fiery little 
word ought goes unexplained in Ethics, except in an 
hypothetical sense, that a man ought to do this, and 
avoid that, if he means to be a happy man ; 
of. p. 115. Any man who declares that he does not 
care about ethical or rational happiness, stands to 
Ethics as that man stands to Music who ** hath no 
ear for concord of sweet sounds." 

All that Ethics or Music can do for such a 
Philistine is to **send him away to another city, 
pouring ointment on his head, and crowning him 
with wool," as Plato would dismiss the tragedian 



PREFACE. 



vii 



(Republic III. 398). The author of the Magna 
Moralia well says (I. i. 13) : No scieiice or faculty 
ever argues the goodness of the end which it pro- 
poses to itself: it belongs to some other faculty 
to consider that. Neither the physician says that 
health is a good thing, nor the builder that a house 
is a good thing : but the one announces that he 
produces health and how he produces it, and the 
builder in like manner a house." The professor of 
Ethics indeed, from the very nature of his subject- 
matter, says in pointing oat happiness that it is 
the rational sovereign good of man : but to any 
one unmoved by that demonstration Ethics can 
have no more to say. Ethics will not threaten, 
nor talk of duty, law, or punishment. 

Ethics, thus strictly considered on an Aristo- 
telian basis, are antecedent to Natural Theology. 
They belong rather to Natural Anthropology : they 
are a study of human nature. But as human nature 
points to God, so Ethics are not wholly irrespective 
of God, considering Him as the object of human 
happiness and worship, — the Supreme Being without 
whom all the aspirations of humanity are at fault 
(pp. 13 — 26, 191 — 197). Ethics do not refer to the 
commandments of God, for this simple reason, that 
they have nothing to say to commandments, or 
laws, or obligation, or authority. They are simply 



PREFACE. 



a system of moral hygiene, which a man may adopt 
or not : only, Hke any other physician, the professor 
of Ethics utters a friendly warning that misery m.ust 
ensue upon the neglect of what makes for health. 

Deontology, not Ethics, expounds and vindicates 
the idea, I ought. It is the science of Duty. It 
carries the mild suasions of Ethics into laws, and 
out of moral prudence it creates conscience. And 
whereas Ethics do not deal with sin, except under 
the aspect of what is called * philosophical sin ' 
(p. iig, § 6), Deontology deRnes sin in its proper 
theological sense, as ** an offence against God, or 
any thought, word, or deed against the law of God." 
Deontology therefore presupposes and is consequent 
upon Natural Theology At the same time, while 
Ethics indicate a valuable proof of the existence of 
God as the requisite Object of Happiness, Deon- 
tology affords a proof of Ilfm as the requisite Law- 
giver. Without God, mar's rational desire is 
frustrate, and man's conscience a misrepresentation 
of fact.^ 

^ This is Cardinal Newman's proof of the existence of God 
from Conscience: see pp. 124, 125, and Grammar of Assent, pp. 104 
— Ill, ed. 1895. With Newman's, " Conscience has both a critical 
and a judicial ofl&ce," compare Plato, Politicus, i(jo b, a-v/xirda-qs ttji 
yywarTLKris rh fiiv iiriraKTiKhv fiepos, rh Sc KpiTiKSf. The ' critical ' 
office belongs to Ethics: the 'judicial,' or 'preceptive' ofiice 
rh iiTiranriKiv) to Deontology ; and this latter poiuts to a Person 
who commands and judges, that is, to God. 



Ix 



In this volume, pp. i — io8 make up the treatise 
on Ethics : pp. 109 — 176 that on Deontology. 

Aristotle writes : He that acts by intelligence 
and cultivates understanding, is likely to be bes-t 
disposed and dearest to God. For if, as is thought, 
there is any care of human things on the part of 
the heavenly powers, we may reasonably expect 
them to delight in that which is best and most akin 
to themselves, that is, in intelligence, and to make 
a return of good to such as supremely love and 
honour intelligence, as cultivating the thing dearest 
to Heaven, and so behaving rightly and well. Such, 
plainty, is the behaviour of the wise. The wise 
man therefore is the dearest to God " (Nic. Eth. X. 
ix. 13). But Aristotle does not work out the con- 
nexion betv/een God and His law on the one hand 
and human conscience and duty on the other. In 
that direction the Stoics, and after them the Roman 
Jurists, went further than Aristctle. By reason of 
this deficiency, Aristotle, peerless as he is in Ethics, 
remains an imperfect Moral Philosopher. 



PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION (1918). 



I. I HAVE altered the opening pages in accordance 
with the Preface to the edition of 1905. 

2. I have added a paragraph on Syndicalism 
(pp. 291-2). 

3. Also a new Table of Addenda ct Corrigenda, 
and a new Index. 

The quotations from St. Thomas may be read 
in English, nearly all of them, in the Author's 
Aquinas Ethicns, 2 vols. ; 12s. (Burns and Gates.) 



CONTENTS. 



PART I.— ETHICS. 

PAGE 

Chapter I. — Of the Object-matter and Partition of 

Moral PiiiLosoPHy , . . , x 
Chapter II. — Of Happiness. 

Section I. — Of Ends . . , , ,3 

,, II. — Definition of Happiness . . .6 

,, III. — Happiness open to Man . . « ^3 

,, IV. — Of the Object of Perfect Happiness , . 21 

V. — Of the use of the present life . . ,26 
Chapter III. — Of Human Acts. 

Section I. — What makes a human act less voluntary . 27 
,, II. — Of the determinants of Morality in any given 

action . . . , - Si 
Chapter IV. — Of Passions. 

Section I. — Of Passions in general . . , •41 

,, II. — Of Desire , . . , .49 

„ HI.— Of Delight . . . , .54 

IV.— Of Anger . . . , .61 
Chapter V. — Of Habits and Virtues. 

Section I.— Of Habit . , , .64 
,, II. — Of Virtues in general . . . .69 
HI. — Of the difference between Virtues, Intellec- 
tual and Moral . . -73 
„ IV. — Of the i\Iean in Moral Virtue . . . 77 
„ V. — Of Cardinal Virtues . , , .84 

VI. — Of Prudence , . , , • 8? 
„ VII. — Of Temperarico . , - 90 
.. VH I.— Of Fortitude ... , . 94 

IX —Of Justice I03 



xii 



PART II.— DEONTOLOGY. 

Chapter I. (VI.)— Of the Origin of Moral Obligation. 
Section I. — Of the natural difference between Good and 

Evil ..... 109 

II. — How Good becomes bounden duty, and Evil 

is advanced to sin . . . .115 

Chapter II. (VII.)— Of THE Eternal Law . . 126 

Chapter III, (VIII.)— Of the Natural Law of Conscience. 

Section I.— Of the Origin of Primary Moral Judgments 133 
II. — Of the invariability of Primary Moral Judg- 
ments ..... 144 
,, III. — Of the immutability of the Natural Law 147 
IV.— Of Probabilism . . . .132 

Chapter IV. (IX.)— Of the Sanction of the Natural 
Law. 

Section I. — Of a twofold Sanction, Natural and Divine 159 
II. — Of the Finality of the aforesaid Sanction . 164 
III. — Of Punishment, Retrospective and Retribu- 

. tive . . . . .168 

Chapter V. (X.)— Of Utilitarianism . . . 177 



PART III.— NATURAL LAW. 



Chapter I. — Of Duties to God. 

Section I. — Of the Worship of God 

II. — Of Superstitious Practices . 
,, III. — Of the duty of knowing God 
Chapter II. — Of the Duty of Preserving Life. 
Section I. — Of Killing, Direct and Indirect 

II.— Of Killing done indirectly in Self-defence 
,, III.— Of Suicide .... 
,, IV.— Of Duelling .... 
Chapter III.— Of Speaking the Truth. 
Section I. — Of the definition of a Lie 
11. —Of the Evil of Lying . 
,, III. — Of the keeping of Secrets without Lying 
Chapter IV. — Of Charm y .... 



CONTENTS. xiii 



PAGE 

Chapter V. — Of Rights. 

Section I. — Of the definition and division of Rights , 244 

,, II. — Of the so-called Rights of Animals . , 248 

„ III. — Of the right to Honour and Reputation . 251 '-^ 

„ IV. — Of Contracts ..... 253 

,, V. — Of Usury ... . 255 
Chapter VI. — Of Marriage. 

Section I. — Of the Institution of Marriage . , 263 

,, II. — Of the Unity of Marriage . , , 270 

,, III. — Of the Indissolubility of Marriage . , 274 
Chapter VII. — Of Propkkty. 

Section I. — Of Private Property . , . .278 

II. — Of Private Capital , . . . 2S2 

,, III. — Of Landed Property .... 292 
Chapter VIII. — Of the State. 

Section I. — Of the Monstrosities called Leviathan and 

Social Contract .... 297 
„ II. — Of the theory that Civil Power is an aggre- 
gate formed by subscription of the powers 
of individuals .... 307 
„ III. — Of the true state of Nature, which is the 
state of civil society, and consequdntly of 
the Divine origin of Power . 310 
„ IV. — Of the variety of Polities . . 319 
.1 v.— Of the Divine Right of Kings and the In- 
alienable Sovereignty of the People , 326 
*• VI. — Of the Elementary and Original Polity . 334 
„ VII. — Of Resistance to Civil Power , 333 
„ VIII.— Of the Right of the Sword . . 343 
IX.— Of War • • ... 350 
t, X. — Of the Scope and Aim of Civil Governmeat 354 
M XI. — Of Law and Liberty .... 359 
m XII. — Of Liberty of Opinion . . 364 



ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA, 



p. 31. Aristotle calls the end rh reAos ; the means, to. irphs rh 
TeAos (St. Thomas, ea qua sunt ad finevi) ; the circumstances, to. iu 

OlS 7] TTpa^lS. 

Observe, both end and means are willed dirictly, but the circum- 
stances indirectly. 

The end is intended, ^ov\r,T6v ; the means are chosen, -Kpoaiperov, 
the circumstances are simply permitted, av^Krov, rightly or wrongly. 
The intention of the end is called by English philosophers the 
motive : while the choice of means they call the intention, an un- 
fortunate terminology, 

p. 42, §.3. " As the wax takes all shapes, and yet is wax still at 
the bottom ; the vwoKeifxeyou still is wax ; so the soul transported in 
so many several passions of joy, fear, hope, sorrow, anger, and 
the rest, has for its general groundwork of all this, Love." (Henry 
More, quoted in Carey's Dante, Purgatorio, c. xviii.) Hence, says 
Carey, Love does not figure in CoUins's Ode on the Passions. 

p. 43. For daring read recklessness. 

p. 44. Plato is a thorough Stoic when he says {Phaedo 83) that 
every pleasure and pain comes with a nail to pin down the soul to 
the body and make it corporeal. His Stoicism appears in his 
denunciation of the drama {Republic, \. 604). 

p. 47, §. 8. The first chapter of Mill's Autobiography, pp. 4S — 53. 
133—149, supplies an instance. 

p. 49, §. I, 1. 2, (ov physical read psychical. 

P- 52, §• 5- This serving, in Greek dov\€V€iv, St. Ignatius calls 
' inordinate attachment,' the modern form of idolatry. Cf. Romans 
vi. 16 — 22. 

p. 79. For spoiled read spoilt. 

p. 84, foot. For ways read iray. 

p. 85, 1. 6 from foot. Substitute : (/3) to restrain ths said appetite 
in its irascible part from shrinking from danger, 
p. 94, middle. For others read other. 
p. 95. For Daring read Recklessness. 



ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA 



XV 



p. 103, middle. Substitute, " neither evening star nor morning star- 
is so iL'onderful." 

p. 106. §. 6. Aristotle speaks of 'corrective,^ not of 'commutative ' 
justice. On the Aristotelian division of justice see Political and Moral 
Essays (P. M. E ), pp. 285-6, 

p. in, §. 4. The static equivalent of the dynamic idea of orderly 
development is that the eternal harmonies and fitnesses of things, by obser- 
vance or neglect whereof a man comes to be in or out of harmony with 
himself, with his fellows, with God. 

p. 133. To the Readings add Plato Laws, ix. 875, A, B, C, D. 

p. 151. Rewrite the Note thus ; The author has seen reason some- 
what to modify this view, as appears by the Appendix. See P.M.E. 
pp. 185-9 : Fowler's Progressive Morality, or Foivler and Wilson's 
Principles of Morals, pp. 227 — 248. 

p. 181, 1. II from top. Add, This is "the huv of our nature, that 
function is primary, and pleasure only attendant " [Stewart, Notes on 
Nicomathean Ethics, II. 418). 

p. 218, lines 13 — 16 from top, cancel the sentence, To this query ^ 
etc., and substitute : The reply is, that God is never willing that man 
should do an inordinate act ; but suicide is an inordinate act, as has been 
shown; capital punishment is not (c. viii. s. viii. n. 7, p. 349). 

p. 237. For Tlie Month for March, 1883, read P.M.E., pp. 215, 
—233- 

p. 251. To the Reading add P.M.E., pp. 267 — 283. 

p. 297, 1. 6 from foot. After simply evil add : Hobbes alloivs that 
human reason lays down certain good rules, ' laws of nature,' which 
however it cannot get kept. For Hobbes and Rousseau see further 
P.M.E., pp. 81—90. 

p. 319, middle. Cancel the words : but the stem total of civil power 
is a constant quantity, the same for all States. 

pp. 322-3. Cancel §. 7 for reasons alleged in P.M.E., pp. 50 — 
72. Substitute ; States are living organizations and grow, and their 
powers vary icith the stage of their development. 

p. 323, ?5 8. For This seems at variance ivith, read This brings us to 
consider. 

p. 33S. To the Readings add P.M.E., pp. 102 — 113. 

p. 347, middle. Cancel from one of these prerogatives to the end 
of the sentence. Substitute: of every polity even in the most infan- 
tine condition. 



MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 



Part I. Ethics. 
CHx\PTER I. 

OF THE OBJECT-MATTER AND PARTITION OF MORAL 
PHILOSOPHY. 

I. Moral Philosophy is the science of human acts 
in their bearing on human happiness and human 
duty. 

2. Those acts alone are properly called human, 
which a man is master of to do or not to do. 
A human ad, then, is an act voluntary and free. A 
man is what his human acts make him. 

3. A voluntary act is an act that proceeds from 
the will with a knowledge of the end to which the 
act tends. 

4. A free act is an act which so proceeds from 
the will that under the same antecedent conditions 
it might have not proceeded. 

An act may be more or less voluntary, and more 
or less free. 

5. Moral Philosophy is divided into Ethics, 
Deontology, and Natural Law. Ethics consider 

B 



MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 



human acts in their bearing on human happiness ; 
or, what is the same thing, in their agreement or 
disagreement with man's rational nature, and their 
making for or against his last end. Deontology is 
the study of moral obligation, or the fixing of what 
logicians call the comprehension of the idea / ought. 
Ethics deal with ro irperrov, ' the becoming ' ; De- 
ontology with TO Seov, 'the obligatory'. Deont- 
ology is the science of Duty, as such. Natural 
Law (antecedent to Positive Law, whether divine 
or human, civil or ecclesiastical, national or inter- 
national) determines duties in detail, — the extension 
of the idea I ought, — and thus is the foundation of 
Casuistry. 

6. In the order of sciences. Ethics are ante- 
cedent to Natural Theology ; Deontology, conse- 
quent upon it. 

Readings. — St. Thos., in Eth., L, lect. i, init. ; 
ib., la 2as, q. i, art. i, in corp. ; ib., q. 58, art. i, 
in corp. 



CHAPTER II. 



OF HAPPINESS. 
Section I. — Of Ends, 

I. Every human act is done for some end or 
purpose. The end is always regarded by the agent 
in the hght of something good. If evil be done, it 
is done as leading to good, or as bound up with 
good, or as itself being good for the doer under 
the circumstances ; no man ever does evil for sheer 
evil's sake. Yet evil may be the object of the will, 
not by itself, nor primarily, but in a secondary way, 
as bound up with the good that is willed in the 
first place. 

2. Many things willed are neither good nor evil 
in themselves. There is no motive for doing them 
except in so far as they lead to some good beyond 
themselves, or to deliverance from some evil, which 
deliverance counts as a good. A thing is willed, 
then, either as being good in itself and an end by 
itself, or as leading to some good end. Once a 
thing not good and desirable by itself has been 
taken up by the will as leading to good, it may be 
taken up again and again without reference to its 
tendency. But such a thing was not originally 
taken up except in view of good to come of it. We 



4 



OP happiness: 



may wiii one thing as leading to another, and that 
to a third, and so on; thus one wills study for 
learning, learning for examination purposes, exami- 
nation for a commission in the army, and the 
commission for glory. That end in which the will 
rests, willing it for itself without reference to any- 
thing beyond, is called the last end. 

3. An end is either objective or subjective. The 
objective end is the thing wished for, as it exists 
distinct from the person who wishes it. The sub- 
jective end is the possession of the objective end. 
That possession is a fact of the wisher's own being. 
Thus money may be an objective end : the corre- 
sponding subjective end is being wealthy. 

4. Is there one subjective last end to all the 
human acts of a given individual? Is there one 
supreme motive for ail that this or that man deliber- 
ately does ? At first sight it seems that there is not. 
The same individual will act now for glory, now 
for lucre, now for love. But all these different 
ends are reducible to one, that it may be well with 
him and his. And what is true of one man here, is 
true of all. All the human acts of all men are done 
for the one (subjective) last end just indicated. This 
end is called happiness. 

5. Men place their happiness in most different 
things ; some in eating and drinking, some in the 
heaping up of money, some in gambling, some in 
poHtical power, some in the gratification of affection, 
some in reputation of one sort or another. But each 
one seeks his own speciality because he thinks that 
he shall be happy, that it will be well with him, 



OF ENDS. 



5 



when he has attained that. All men, then, do all 
things for happiness, though not all place their 
happiness in the same thing. 

6. Just as when one goes on a journey, he need 
not think of his destination at every step of his 
way, and yet all his steps are directed towards his 
destination : so men do not think of happiness in 
all they do, and yet all they do is referred to happi- 
ness. Tell a traveller that this is the wrong way 
to his destination, he will avoid it ; convince a man 
that this act will not be well for him, will not further 
his happiness, and, while he keeps that conviction 
principally before his eyes, he will not do the act. 
But as a man who began to travel on business, may 
come to make travelling itself a business, and travel 
for the sake of going about ; so in all cases there is 
a tendency to elevate into an end that which was, 
to start with, only valued as a means to an end. 
So the means of happiness, by being habitually 
pursued, come to be a part of happiness. Habit is 
a second nature, and we indulge a habit as we gratify 
nature. This tendency works itself to an evil ex- 
treme in cases where mien are become the slaves oi 
habit, and do a thing because they are got into the 
way of doing it, though they allow that it is a sad 
and sorry way, and leads them wide of true happi- 
ness. These instances show perversion of the normal 
operation of the will. 

Readings. — St. Thos., la 2£e, q. I, art. 4, in corp.; 
t6., q. I. art. 6, 7; ih,, q. 5, art. 8; Ar., Eth., I., vii„ 
4, 5* 



6 



OF HAPPINESS. 



Section II. — Definition of Happiness, 

X. Though all men do all things, in the last 
resort, that it may be well with them and theirs, 
that is, for happiness vaguely apprehended, yet when 
they come to specify what happiness is, answers so 
various are given and acted upon, that we might be 
tempted to conclude that each man is the measure 
of his own happiness, and that no standard of happi- 
ness for all can be defined. But it is not so. Man 
is not the measure of his own happiness, any more 
than of his own health. The diet that he takes to 
be healthy, may prove his poison ; and where he 
looks for happiness, he may find the extreme of 
wretchedness and woe. For man must live up to 
his nature, to his bodily constitution, to be a healthy 
man ; and to his whole nature, but especially to his 
mental and moral constitution, if he is to be a happy 
man. And nature, though it admits of individual 
peculiarities, is specifically the same for all. There 
will, then, be one definition of happiness for all men, 
specifically as such. 

2. Happiness is an acty not a state. That is to say, 
the happiness of man does not lie in his having 
something done to him, nor in his being habitually 
able to do something, but in his actually doing 
something. "To be up and doing," that is happi- 
ness, — iv Tc3 l^rjv Kol ivepyelv. (Ar., Eth., IX., ix., 5.) 
This is proved from the consideration that happi- 
ness is the crown and perfection of human nature ; 
but the perfection of a thing lies in its ultimate act, 
or ** second act," that is, in its not merely being able 



DEFINITION OF HAPPINESS. 



7 



to act, but acting. But action is of two sorts. One 
proceeds from the agent to some outward matter, as 
cutting and burning. This action cannot be happi- 
ness, for it does not perfect the agent, but rather 
the patient. There is another sort of act immanent 
in the agent himself, as feeling, understanding, and 
willing : these perfect the agent. Happiness will be 
found to be one of these immanent acts. Further- 
more, there is action full of movement and change, 
and there is an act done in stillness and rest. The 
latter, as will presently appear, is happiness ; and 
partly for this reason, and partly to denote the 
exclusion of care and trouble, happiness is often 
spoken of as a rest. It is also called a state, because 
one of the elements of happiness is permanence. 
How the act of happiness can be permanent, will 
appear hereafter. 

3. Happiness is an act in discharge of the function 
proper to man, as man. There is a function proper 
to the eye, to the ear, to the various organs of the 
human body: there must be a function proper to 
man as such. That can be none of the functions of 
the vegetative life, nor of the mere animal life within 
him. Man is not happy by doing what a rose-bush 
can do, digest and assimilate its food : nor by doing 
what a horse does, having sensations pleasurable 
and painful, and muscular feelings. Man is happy 
by doing what man alone can do in this world, that 
is, acting by reason and understanding. Now the 
human will acting by reason may do three things. 
It may regulate the passions, notably desire and 
fear : the outcome will be the moral virtues of 



8 



OF HAPPINESS, 



temperance and fortitude. It may direct the under- 
standing, and ultimately the members of the body, 
in order to the production of some practical result 
in the external world, as a bridge. Lastly, it may 
direct the understanding to speculate and think, 
contemplate and consider, for mere contemplation's 
sake. Happiness must take one or other of these 
three lanes. 

4. First, then, happiness is not the practice of the 
moral virtues of temperance and fortitude. Temperance 
makes a man strong against the temptations to irra- 
tionality and swinishness that come of the bodily 
appetites. But happiness lies, not in deliverance 
from what would degrade man to the level of the 
brutes, but in something which shall raise m.an to 
the highest level of human nature. Fortitude, againj 
is not exercised except in the hour of danger ; but 
happiness lies in an environm.ent of security, not of 
danger. And in general, the moral virtues can be 
exercised only upon occasions, as they come and 
go ; but happiness is the light of the soul, that must 
burn with steady flame and uninterrupted act, and 
not be dependent on chance occurrences. 

5. Secondl) , happiness is not the nse of the practical 
understanding with a view to production. Happiness 
is an end in itself, a terminus beyond which the act 
of the will can go no further ; but this use of the 
understanding is in view of an ulterior end, the thing 
to be produced. That product is either useful or 
artistic ; if useful, it ministers to some further end 
still ; if artistic, it ministers to contemplation. 
Happiness, indeed, is no exercise of the practical 



DEFINITION OF HAPPINESS. 



9 



understanding whatever. The noblest exercises of 
practical understanding are for militar}'' purposes 
and for statesmanship. But war surely is not an 
end in itself to any right-minded man. Statecraft, 
too, has an end before it, the happiness of the 
people. It is a labour in view of happiness. We 
must follow down the third lane, and say : 

6. Happiness is the act of the speculative understand- 
ing contemplating for contemplation's sake. This act 
has all the marks of happiness. It is the highest 
act of man's highest power. It is the most capable 
of continuance. It is fraught with pleasure, purest 
and highest in quality. It is of all acts the most 
self-sufficient and independent of environment, pro- 
vided the object be to the mind's eye visible. It is 
welcome for its own sake, not as leading to any 
further good. It is a life of ease and leisure : man 
is busy that he may come to ease. 

7. Aristotle says of this life of continued active 
contemplation : 

**Such a life will be too good for man; for not as 
he is man will he so live, but inasmuch as there is a 
divine element in his composition. As much as this 
element excels the compound into which it enters, 
so much does the act of the said element excel any 
act in any other hne of virtue. If, then, the under- 
standing is divine in comparison with man, the life 
of the understanding is divine in comparison with 
human life. We must not take the advice of those 
who tell us, that being man, one should cherish the 
thoughts of a man, or being mortal, the thoughts of 
a mortal, but so far as in us lies, we must play the 



OF HAPPINESS. 



immortal {adavarl^eiv), and do all in our power tc 
live by the best element in our nature : for though 
that element be slight in quantity, in power and in 
value it far outweighs all the rest of our being. A 
man may well be reckoned to be that which is the 
ruling power and the better part in him. . . . What 
is proper to each creature by nature, is best and 
sweetest for each : such, then, is for man the life 
of the understanding, if the understanding pre- 
eminently is man." (Ar., Eth., X., vii., 8, g.) 

8. But if happiness is an act in discharge of the 
function proper to man as man (n. 3), how can it be 
happiness to lead a life which Aristotle says is too 
good for man ? The solution of this paradox is 
partly contained in the concluding words of Aristotle 
above quoted, and will still further appear presently 
(s. iv., n. I, p. 21), where we shall argue that human 
life is a state of transition in preparation for a 
higher life of the soul, to be lived, according to the 
natural order, when the compound of soul and body 
would no longer exist. 

g. The act of contemplation, in which happiness con- 
sists, must rest upon a habit of contemplation, which is 
intellectual virtue. An act, to be perfection and hap- 
piness, must be done easily, sweetly, and constantly. 
But no act of the intellect can be so done, unless it 
rests upon a corresponding habit. If the habit has 
not been acquired, the act will be done fitfully, at 
random, and against the grain, like the music of an 
untrained singer, or the composition of a schoolboy. 
Painful study is not happiness, nor is any studied 
act. Happiness is the play of a mind that is, if not 



DEFINITION OF HAPPINESS. 



II 



master of, yet at home with its subject. As the 
intellect is man's best and noblest power, so is intel- 
lectual virtue, absolutely speaking, the best virtue of 
man. 

10. The use of the speculative understanding is 
descernible in many things to which even the common 
crowd turn for happiness, as news of that which is 
of little or no practical concern to self, sight-seeing, 
theatre-going, novels, poetry, art, scenery, as well 
as speculative science and high literature. A certain 
speculative interest is mixed up with all practical 
work : the mind lingers on the speculation apart 
from the end in view. 

1 1. The act of contemplation cannot he steadily carried 
on, as is necessary to happiness, except in the midst of 
easy surroundings. Human nature is not self-sufficient 
for the work of contemplation. There is need of 
health and vigour, and the means of maintaining it, 
food, warmth, interesting objects around you, leisure, 
absence of distracting care or pain. None would 
call a man happy upon the rack, except by way of 
maintaining a thesis. The happiness of a disem- 
bodied spirit is of course independent of bodily 
conditions, but it would appear that there are con- 
ditions of environment requisite for even a spirit's 
contemplation. 

12. Happiness must endure to length of days* 
Happiness is the perfect good of man. But no 
good is perfect that will not last. One swallow 
does not make a summer, nor does one fine day: 
neither is man made blessed and happy by one day, 
nor by a brief time. The human mind lighting upon 



12 



OF HAPPINESS. 



good soon asks the question, Will this last ? If the 
answer is negative, the good is not a complete good 
and there is no complete happiness coming of it. 
If the answer is affirmative and false, once more 
that is not a perfect happiness that rests on a 
delusion. The supreme good of a rational being is 
not found in a fool's paradise. We want an answer 
affirmative and true : This happiness shall last, 

13. We now sum up and formulate the definition 
of happiness as follows : Happiness is a bringing oj 
the soul to act accordijig to the habit of the best and most 
perfect virtue, that is, the virtiLe of the speculative intel- 
lect, borne out by easy surroundings, and efiduring to 
length of days — ivepyeta -^u^?}? /car aperrjv rrjy 
apLCTTrjv Kal reXecordrTjv iv /Slo) rekeicp. (Ar., Eth.j 
I., vii., 15, 16.) 

14. Man is made for society. His happiness 
must be in society, a social happiness, no lonely 
contemplation. He must be happy in the con- 
sciousness of his own intellectual act, and happy in 
the discernment of the good that is in those around 
him, whom he loves. Friends and dear ones are 
no small part of those easy surroimdings that are the 
condition of happiness. 

15. Happiness — final, perfect happiness — is not 
In fighting and struggling, in so far as a struggle 
supposes evil present and imminent ; nor in bene- 
volence, so far as that is founded upon miser}' 
needing relief. We fight for the conquest and 
suppression of evil ; we are benevolent for the heal- 
ing of misery. But it will be happiness, in the 
liiniff as mathematicians speak, to wish well to all 



HAPPINESS OPEN TO MAN. 



in a society where it is well with all, and to struggle 
with truth for its own sake, ever grasping, never 
mastering, as Jacob wrestled with God. 

Readings. — Ar., Eth., I., vii. viii., 5 to end ; I., x., 8 
to end; L, v., 6; VII., xiii., 3; IX., ix.; X., vii. ; 
X., viii., I — 10; Ar., Pol., IV. (al, VII.), i., 3—10; 
IV., iii., 7, 8 ; St. Thos., la 2as, q. 3, art. 2; ib.^ q. 3, 
art. 5. in corp., ad 3 ; ib., q. 2, art. 6. 

Section III. — Happiness open to man, 

•* And now as he looked and saw the whole 
Hellespont covered with the vessels of his fleet, and 
all the shore and every plain about Abydos as full as 
possible of men, Xerxes congratulated himself on 
his good fortune ; but after a little while, he wept. 
Then Artabanus, the King's uncle, when he heard 
that Xerxes was in tears, went to him, and said : 
'How different, sire, is what thou art now doing 
from what thou didst a little while ago ! Then 
thou didst congratulate thyself ; and now, behold ! 
thou weepest.' * There came upon me,' replied 
he, ' a sudden pity, when I thought of the shortness 
of man's life, and considered that of all this host, 
so numerous as it is, not one will be alive when a 
hundred years are gone by.' 'And yet there are 
sadder things in life than that,' returned the other. 
'Short as our time is, there is no man, whether it 
be among this multitude or elsewhere, who is so 
happy, as not to have felt the wish — I will not say 
once, but full many a time — that he were dead 
rather than alive. Calamities fall upon us, sick- 
nesses vex and harass us, and make life, short 



14 



OF HAPPINESS. 



though it be, to appear long. So death, through 
the wretchedness of our hfe, is a most sweet refuge 
to our race ; and God, who gives us the tastes 
that we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in his very 
gift, to be envious." (Herodotus, vii., 45, 46.) 

I. It needs no argument to show that happi- 
ness, as defined in the last section, can never be 
perfectly realized in this life. Aristotle took his 
definition to represent an ideal to be approximated 
to, not attained. He calls his sages "happy as 
men " (Eth., L, x., 16), that is, imperfectly, as all 
things human are imperfect. Has Aristotle, then, 
said the last word on happiness ? Is perfect happi- 
ness out of the reach of the person whom in this 
mortal life we call man ? However that may be, 
it is plain that man desires perfect happiness. Every 
man desires that it may be perfectly well with him 
and his, although many have mistaken notions of 
what their own well-being consists in, and few can 
define it philosophically. Still they all desire it. 
The higher a man stands in intellect, the loftier and 
vaster his conception of happiness, and the stronger 
his yearning after it. This argues that the desire oj 
happiness is natural to man : not in the sense in 
which eating and drinking are natural, as being 
requirements of his animal nature, but in the same 
way that it is natural to him to think and converse, 
his rational nature so requiring. It is a natural desire, 
as springing from that which is the specific charac- 
teristic of human nature, distinguishing it from mere 
animal nature, namely reason. It is a natural desire 
in fhe best and highest sense of the word. 



HAPPINESS OPEN TO MAN. 



2. Contentment is not happiness. A man is 
content with little, but it takes an immensity of 
good to satisfy all his desire, and render him per- 
fectly happy. When we say we are content, we 
signify that we should naturally desire more, but 
acquiesce in our present portion, seeing that more 
is not to be had. "Content," says Dr. Bain, "is 
not the natural frame of any mind, but is the result 
of compromise." 

3. But is not this desire of unmixed happiness 
unreasonable? Are we not taught to set bounds 
to our desire ? Is not moderation a virtue, and 
contentment wisdom ? Yes, moderation is a virtue, 
but it concerns only the use of means, not the 
apprehension of ends. The patient, not to say the 
physician, desires medicines in moderation, so nmch 
as will do him good and no more ; but, so far as his 
end is health, he desires all possible health, perfect 
health. The last end, then, is to be desired as a 
thing to possess without end or measure, fully and 
without defect. 

4. We have then these facts to philosophise on : 
that all men desire perfect happiness : that this 
desire is natural, springing from the rational soul 
which sets man above the brute : that on earth man 
may attain to contentment, and to some happiness, 
but not to perfect happiness : that consequently 
nature has planted in man a desire for which on 
earth she has provided no adequate satisfaction. 

5. If the course of events were fitful and way- 
ward, so that effects started up without causes, and 
like causes under like conditions produced unlike 



t6 



OF HAPPINESS. 



effects, and anything might come of anything, there 
would be no such thing as that which we call 7iaturc. 
When we speak of nature, we imply a regular and 
definite flow of tendencies, this thing springing from 
that and leading to that other ; nothing from, noth- 
ing, and nothing leading nowhere ; no random, 
aimless proceedings ; but definite results led up to 
by a regular succession of steps, and surely ensuing 
unless something occurs on the way to thwart the 
process. How this is reconciled with Creation and 
Freewill, it is not our province to enquire : suffice 
it to say that a natural agent is opposed to a free 
one, and creation is the starting-point of nature. 
But to return. Everywhere we say, "this is for 
that," vv^herever there appears an end and consum- 
mation to w^hich the process leads, provided it go 
on unimpeded. Now every event that happens is a 
part of some process or other. Every act is part of 
a tendency. Tliere are no loose facts in nature, 
no things that happen, or are, otherwise than in 
consequence of something that has happened, or 
been, before, and in view of something else that is 
to happen, or be, hereafter. The tendencies of 
nature often run counter to one another, so that 
the result to which this or that was tending is 
frustrated. But a tendency is a tendency, although 
defeated ; this was for that, although that foj: which 
it was has got perverted to something else. There 
is no tendency which of itself fails and comes to 
naught, apart from interference. Such a universal 
and absolute break-down is unknown to nature. 
6, All this appears most clearly in organic beings, 



HAPPINESS OPEN TO MAN. 



17 



plants and animals. Organisms, except the very 
lowest, are compounds of a number of different 
parts, each fulfilling a special function for the good 
of the whole. There is no idle constituent in an 
organic body, none without its function. What 
are called rudimentary organs, even if they serve no 
purpose in the individual, have their use in the 
species, or in some higher genus. In the animal 
there is no idle natural craving, or appetite. True, 
in the individual, whether plant or animal, there are 
many potentialities frustrate and made void. That 
is neither here nor there in philosophy. Philosophy 
deals not with individuals but with species, not with 
Bucephalus or Alexander, but with horse, man. It 
is nothing to philosophy that of a thousand seeds 
there germinate perhaps not ten. Enough that one 
seed ever germinates, and that all normal speci- 
mens are apt to do the like, meeting with proper 
environment. That alone shows that seed is not 
an idle product in this or that class of living beings. 

7. But, it will be said, not everything contained 
in an organism ministers to its good. There is 
refuse material, only good to get rid of : there are 
morbid growths ; there is that tendency to decay, 
by which sooner or later the organism will perish. 
First, then, a word on diseases. Diseases are the 
diseases of the individual ; not of the race. The 
race, as such, and that is what the philosopher 
studies, is healthy : all that can be imputed to the 
race is liability to disease. That liability, and the 
tendency to decay and die, are found in living 
things, because their essence is of finite perfection; 
c 



dF HAPPINESS. 



there cannot be a plant or animal, that has not 
these drawbacks in itself, as such. They represent, 
not the work of nature, but the failure of nature, 
and the point beyond which nature can no further 
go- 

8. On the preceding observations Aristotle for- 
mulated the great maxim — called by Dr. Thomas 
Browne, Religio Medici^ p. i., sect. 15, *'the only 
indisputable axiom in philosophy," — Nature does 
notlmig in vain. (Ar., Po/., I., viii., 12 ; De Anima, III., 
ix., 6; Depart, afiimal., 1. i., p. 641, ed. Bekker.) 

9. The desire of happiness, ample and complete^ 
beyond what this world can afford, is not planted in 
man by defect of his nature^ but by the perfection of his 
nature f and in view of his further perfection. This 
desire has not the character of a drawback, a thing 
that cannot be helped, a weakness and decay of 
nature, and loss of power, like that which sets in 
with advancing years. A locomotive drawing a 
train warms the air about it : it is a pity that it 
should do so, for that radiation of heat is a loss of 
power ; but it cannot be helped, as locomotives are 
and must be constructed. Not such is the desire 
of perfect happiness in the human breast. It is 
not a disease, for it is no peculiarity of individuals, 
but a property of the race. It is not a decay, for 
it grows with the growing mind, being feeblest 
in childhood, when desires are simplest and most 
easily satisfied, and strongest where mental life is 
the most vigorous. It is an attribute of great 
minds in proportion to their greatness. To be 
without it, would be to live a minor in point of 



HAPPINESS OPEN TO MAN. 



19 



intellect, not much removed from imbecility. It 
is not a waste of energy, rather it furnishes the 
motive-power to all human volition. It comes of the 
natural working of the understanding that discerns 
good, and other good above that, and so still higher 
and higher good without limit ; and of the natural 
working of the will, following up and fastening upon 
what the understanding discerns as good. The 
desire in question, then, is by no means a necessary 
evil, or natural flaw, in the human constitution. 

10. It follows that the desire of perfect happi- 
ness is in man by the normal growth of his nature, 
and for the better. But it would be a vain desire, 
and objectless, if it were essentially incapable of 
satisfaction : and man would be a made and 
abiding piece of imperfection, if there were no 
good accessible to his intellectual nature sufficient 
to meet its proper exigence of perfect happiness. 
But no such perfect happiness is attainable in this 
world. Therefore there must be a world to come, in 
which he who was man, now a disembodied spirit, 
but still the same person, shall under due condi- 
tions find a perfect good, the adequate object of his 
natural desire. Else is the deepest craving of human 
nature in vain, and man himself is vanity of vanities. 

11. It may be objected that there is no need to 
go beyond this world to explain how the desire of 
perfect happiness is not in vain. It works like 
the desire of the philosopher's stone among the 
old alchemists. The thing they were in search of 
was a chimera, but in looking for it they found a 
real good, modern chemistry. In like manner, it is 



OF HAPPINESS, 



contended, though perfect happiness is not to be 
had anywhere, yet the desire of it keeps men from 
sitting down on the path of progress ; and thus 
to that desire we owe all our modern civilization, 
and all our hope and prospect of higher civilization 
to come. Without questioning the alleged fact 
about the alchemists, we may reply that modern 
chemistry has dissipated the desire of the philoso- 
pher's stone, but modern civilization has not dissi- 
pated the desire of perfect happiness : it has deepened 
it, and perhaps rather obscured the prospect of its 
fulfilment. A desire that grows with progress cer- 
tainly cannot be satisfied by progressing. But if it 
is never to be satisfied, what is it ? A goad thrust 
into the side of man, that shall keep him coursing 
along from century to century, like lo under the 
gadfly, only to find himself in the last century as far 
from the mark as in the first. Apart from the hope 
of the world to come, is the Italy of to-day happier 
than the Italy of Antoninus Pius? Here is a modern 
Itahan's conclusion ; " I have studied man, I have 
examined nature, I have passed whole nights ob- 
serving the starry heavens. And what is the result 
of these long investigations ? Simply this, that the 
life of man is nothing; that man himself is nothing; 
that he will never penetrate the mystery which sur- 
rounds the universe. With this comfortless con- 
viction I descend into the grave, and console myself 
with the hope of speedy annihilation. The lamp 
goes out ; and nothing, nothing can rekindle it. So, 
Nature, I return to thee, to be united with thee for 
ever. Never wilt thou have received into thy bosom 



OBJECT OF PERFECT FIAPPINESS. 31 



a more unhappy being." {La Nnllita delta Vita. By 
G. P., 1882.) 

This is an extreme case, but much of modern 
progress tends this way. Civihzation is not happi- 
ness, nor is the desire for happiness other than vain, 
if it merely leads to increased civihzation. 

Readings. — St. Thomas, C. G., iii., 48; Newman's 
Historical Sketches — Conversion of Augustine; Mill's 
Autobiography y pp. 133 — 149, 

Section YV .—Of the Object of Perfect Happiness, 

I. As happiness is an act of the speculative intel- 
lect contemplating (s. ii., n. 6, p. 9), so the thing thus 
contemplated is the object of happiness. As happiness 
is the subjective last end, so will this object, inasmuch 
as the contemplation of it yields perfect happiness, 
be the objective last end of man. (s. i., nn. 3. 4, p. 4.) As 
perfect happiness is possible, and intended by nature, 
so is this objective last end attainable, and should 
be attained. But attained by man ? Aye, there's 
the rub. It cannot be attained in this life, and after 
death man is no more : a soul out of the body is not 
man. About the resurrection of the body philosophy 
knows nothing. Nature can make out no title to 
resurrection. That is a gratuitous gift of God in 
Christ. When it takes effect, stupebit natura. Philo- 
sophy deals only with the natural order, with man 
as man, leaving the supernatural order, or the privi- 
leges and stattis of man as a child of God, to the 
higher science of Scholastic Theology. Had God 
so willed it, there might have been no supernatural 
at all. Philosophy shows the world as it would 



22 



OF HAPPINESS. 



have been on that hypothesis. In that case, then, 
man would have been, as Aristotle represents him, 
a being incapable of perfect happiness ; but he who 
is man could have become perfectly happy in a state 
other than human, that is, as a disembodied spirit. 
Peter is man : the soul of Peter, after separation, is 
man no longer; but Peter is not one person, and 
Peter's soul out of the body another person ; there 
is but one person there, with one personal history 
and liabilities. The soul of Peter is Peter still : 
therefore the person Peter, or he who is Peter, attains 
to happiness, but not the man Peter, as man, apart 
from the supernatural privilege of the resurrection. 
Hence Aristotle well said, though he failed to see 
the significance of his own saying, that man should 
aim at a life of happiness too good for man. (s. ii., 
nn. 7, 8, p. g.) 

2. The object of happiness, — the objective last 
end of man, — will be that which the soul contem- 
plating in the life to come will be perfectly happy 
by so doing. The soul will contemplate all in- 
tellectual beauty that she finds about her, all heights 
of truth, all the expanse of goodness and mystery , 
of love. She will see herself: a vast and curious 
sight is one pure spirit : but that will not be enough 
for her, her eye travels beyond. She must be in 
company, live with myriads of pure spirits like 
herself, — see them, study them, and admire them, 
and converse with them in closest intimacy. To- 
gether they must explore the secrets of all creation 
even to the most distant star : they must read the 
laws of the universe, which science laboriously spells 



OBJECT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS. 



23 



out here below: they must range from science to 
art, and from facts to possibilities, till even their 
pure intellect is baffled by the vast intricacy of 
things that might be and are not : but yet they are 
not satisfied. A point of convergency is wanted for 
all these vistas of being, whence they may go forth, 
and whither they may return and meet : otherwise 
the soul is distracted and lost in a maze of in- 
coherent wandering, crying out, Whence all this ? 
and what is it for ? and above all, whose is it ? 
These are the questions that the human mind asks 
in her present condition : much more will she ask 
them then, when wonders are multiplied before her 
gaze : for it is the same soul there and here. Here 
men are tormented in mind, if they find no answer 
to these questions. Scientific men cannot leave 
theology alone. They will not be happy there 
without an answer. Their contemplation will still 
desiderate something beyond all finite being, actual 
or possible. Is that God ? It is nothing else. But 
God dwells in light inaccessible, where no creature, 
as such, can come near Him nor see Him. The 
beauties of creation, as so many streams of tendency, 
meet at the foot of His Throne, and there are lost. 
Their course is towards Him, and is, so far as it 
goes, an indication of Him : but He is infinitely, 
unspeakably above them. No intelligence created, 
or creatable, can arrive by its own natural perception 
to see Him as He is: for mind can only discern 
what is proportionate to itself: and God is out of 
proportion with all the being of all possible creatures. 
It is only by analogy that the word being, or any 



24 



OF HAPPINESS. 



other word whatever can be appHed to Him. As 
Plato says, the First Good is not Being, but over 
and beyond Being in dignity and power." {Rep. 
509, B.) 

3. To see God face to face, which is called the 
beatific vision, is not the natural destiny of man, 
nor of any possible creature. Such happiness is not 
the happiness of man, nor of angel, but of God 
Himself, and of any creature Vvdiom He may deign 
by an act of gratuitous condescension to invite to 
sit as guest at His own royal table. That God has 
so invited men and angels, revelation informs us. 
Scholastic theology enlarges upon that revelation, 
but it is be3^ond philosophy. Like the resurrection 
of the body, and much more even than that, the 
Beatific Vision must be relegated to the realm of 
the Supernatural. 

4. But even in the natural order the object oj 
perfect happiness is God. The natural and super- 
natural have the same object, but difi"er in the mode 
of attainment. By supernatural grace, bearing 
perfect fruit, man sees God with the eyes of his 
soul, as we see the faces of our friends on earth. 
In perfect happiness of the natural order, creatures 
alone are directly apprehended, or seen, and from 
the creature is gathered the excellence of the unseen 
God. The process is an ascent, as described by 
Plato, from the individual to the universal, and 
from bodily to moral and intellectual beaut}^ till we 
reach a Beauty eternal, immutable, absolute, sub- 
stantial, and self-existent, on which all other beauties 
depend for their being, while it is independent of 



OBJECT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS. as 

them. (Plato, Symposmm, 210, 211.) Unless the 
ascent be prosecuted thus far, the contemplation is 
inadequate, the happiness incomplete. The mind 
needs to travel to the beginning and end of things, 
to the Alpha and Omega of all. The mind needs 
to reach some perfect good : some object, which 
though it is beyond the comprehension, is never- 
theless understood to be the very good of goods, 
unalloyed with any admixture of defect or im- 
perfection. The mind needs an infinite object to 
rest upon, though it cannot grasp that object 
positively in its infinity. If this is the case even 
with the human mind, still wearing "this muddy 
vesture of decay," how much more ardent the 
longing, as how much keener the gaze, of the pure 
spirit after Him who is the centre and rest of all 
intellectual nature ? 

5. Creatures to contemplate and see God in, are 
conditions and secondary objects of natural hap- 
piness. They do not afford happiness finally of 
themselves, but as manifesting God, even as a 
mirror would be of little interest except for its 
power of reflection. 

6. In saying that God is the object of happiness, 
we must remember that He is no cold, impersonal 
Beauty, but a living and loving God, not indeed in 
the order of nature our Father and Friend, but still 
our kind Master and very good Lord, who speaks 
to His servants from behind the clouds that hide 
His face, and assures them of His abiding favour 
and approving love. More tlian that, nature cannot 
look for: such aspiration were unr.'jLtural, unreason- 



26 



OF HAPPINESS. 



able, mere madness : it is enough for the creature, 
as a creature, in its highest estate to stand before 
God, hearing His voice, but seeing not His coun- 
tenance, whom, without His free grace, none can 
look upon and live. 

Reading, — St. Thos., la 2se, q. 2, art. 8. 

Section V. — Of the use of the present life, 

I. Since perfect happiness is not to be had in 
this mortal life, and is to be had hereafter ; since 
moreover man has free will and the control of his 
own acts ; it is evidently most important for man in 
this life so to control and rule himself here as to 
dispose himself for happiness there. Happiness 
rests upon a habit of contemplation (s. ii., n. g, p. 10), 
rising to God. (s. iv., n. 4, p. 24.) But a habit, as will 
be seen, is not formed except by frequent acts, and 
may be marred and broken by contrary acts. It is, 
then, important for man in this life so to act as to 
acquire a habit of Hfting his mind to God. There 
are two things here, to hft the mind, and to lift it to 
God. The mind is not lifted, if the man lives not 
an intellectual life, but the life of a swine wallowing 
in sensual indulgences ; or a frivolous life, taking 
the outside of things as they strike the senses, and 
flitting from image to image thoughtlessly ; or a 
quarrelsome life, where reason is swallowed up in 
anger and hatred. Again, however sublime the 
speculation and however active the intellect, if God 
is not constantly referred to, the mind is Hfted 
indeed, but not to God. It is wisdom, then, in 
man during this life to look to Gcni everywhere, 



ACTS LESS VOLUNTARY. 



2/ 



and ever to seek His face ; to avoid idleness, anger, 
intemperance, and pride of intellect. For the mind 
will not soar to God when the heart is far from 
Him. 



CHAPTER III. 

OF HUMAN ACTS. 
Section I. — What makes a human act less voluntary, 
I See c. i., nn. 2, 3, 4. 

2. An act is more or less voluntary, as it is done 
with more or less knowledge, and proceeds more or 
less fully and purely from the will properly so called. 
Whatever diminishes knowledge, or partially sup- 
plants the will, takes off from the voluntariness of 
the act. An act is rendered less voluntary by ignorancCy 
by passionate desire, and by fear. 

3. If a man has done something in ignorance 
either of the law or of the facts of the case, and 
would be sorry for it, were he to find out what he 
has done, that act is involuntary, so far as it is 
traceable to ignorance alone. Even if he would not 
be sorry, still the act must be pronounced not 
voluntary, under the same reservation. Ignorance, 
sheer ignorance, takes whatever is done under it 
out of the region of volition. Nothing is willed but 
what is known. An ignorant man is as excusable 
as a drunken one, as such, — no more and no less. 



28 



OF HUMAN ACTS. 



The difference is, that drunkenness generally is 
voluntary; ignorance often is not. But ignorance 
may be voluntary, quite as voluntary as drunkenness. 
It is a capital folly of our age to deny the possibility 
of voluntary intellectual error. Error is often 
voluntary, and (where the matter is one that the 
person officially or otherv^ise is required to know) 
immoral too. A strange thing it is to say that ''it 
is as unmeaning to speak of the immorality of an 
intellectual mistake as it would be to talk of the 
colour of a sound." (Lecky, European Morals, ii., 

202.) 

4. There is an ignorance that is sought on 
purpose, called affected ignorance (in the Shakspearian 
sense of the word affect), as when a man will not 
read begging-letters, that he m.ay not give anything 
away. Such ignorance does not hinder voluntariness. 
It indicates a strong will of doing or omitting, come 
what may. There is yet another ignorance called 
crass, which is when a man, without absolutely 
declining knowledge, yet takes no pains to acquire 
it in a matter where he is aware that truth is 
important to him. Whatever election is made in 
consequence of such ignorance, is less voluntary, 
indeed, than if it were made in the full light, still 
it is to some extent voluntary. It is voluntary in its 
cause, that is, in the voluntary ignorance that led to 
it. Suppose a man sets up as a surgeon, having 
made a very imperfect study of his art. He is 
aware, that for want of knowledge and skill, he 
shall endanger many lives : still he neglects oppor- 
tunities of making himself competent, and goes 



ACTS LESS VOLUNTARY. 



audaciously to work. If any harm comes of his 
bungling, he can plead intellectual error, an error 
of judgment for the time being ; he did his best as 
well as he knew it. Doubtless he did, and in that 
he is unlike the malicious maker of mischief : still 
he has chosen lightly and recklessly to hazard a 
great evil. To that extent his will is bound to the 
evil : he has chosen it, as it were, at one remove. 

5. Another instance. A man is a long way on 
to seeing, though he does not quite see, the claims 
of the Church of Rome on his allegiance and sub- 
mission. He suspects that a little more prayer and 
search, and he shall be a Roman Catholic. To 
escape this, he resolves to go travelling and give up 
prayer. This is affected ignorance. Another has no 
such perception of the claims of Catholicism. He 
has no religion that satisfies him. He is aware 
speculatively of the importance of the religious 
question ; but his heart is not in religion at all. 
With Demas, he loves the things of this world. 
Very attractive and interesting does he find this 
life ; and for the life to come he is content to chance 
it. This is crass ignora?ice of religious truth. Such 
a man is not a formal heretic, for he is not altogether 
wilful and contumacious in his error. Still neither 
is it wholly involuntary, nor he wholly guiltless. 

6. Passionate desire is not an affection of the will, 
but of the sensitive appetite. The will may co- 
operate, but the passion is not in the will. The 
will may neglect to check the passion, when it 
might ; it may abet and inflame it : in these ways 
an act done in passion is a voluntary act. Still it 



30 



OF HUMAN ACTS. 



becomes voluntary only by the influx of the will, 
positively permitting or stimulating : it is not volun- 
tary precisely as it proceeds from passion : for 
voluntary is that w^hich is of the will. It belongs 
to passion to bring on a momentary darkness in the 
understanding : where such darkness is, there is so 
much the less of a human act. But passion in an 
adult of sane mind is hardly strong enough, of 
itself and wholly without the will, to execute any 
considerable outward action, involving the voluntary 
muscles. Things are often said and done, and put 
down to passion : but that is not the whole account 
of the matter. The will has been for a long time 
either feeding the passions, or letting them range 
unchecked : that is the reason of their present 
outburst, which is voluntary at least in its caiLse. 
Once this evil preponderance has been brought 
about, it is to be examined whether the will, in 
calm moods, is making any efforts to redress the 
evil. Such efforts, if made, go towards making the 
effects of passion, when they come, involuntary, and 
gradually preventing them altogether. 

7. What a man does from fear^ he is said to do 
under compulsion, especially if the fear be applied 
to him by some other person in order to gain 
a purpose. Such compulsory action is distinguished 
in ordinary parlance from voluntary action. And 
it is certainly less voluntary, inasmuch as the will is 
hedged in to make its choice between two evils, and 
chooses one or other only as being the less evil ot 
the two, not for any liking to the thing in itself. Still, 
all things considered, the thing is chosen, and the 



DETERMINANTS OF MORALITY. p 



action is so far voluntary. We may call it voluntary 
in the concrete, and involuntary in the abstract. The 
thing is willed as matters stand, but in itself and 
apart from existing need it is not liked at all. But 
as acts must be judged as they stand, by what the 
man wills now, not by what he would will, an act 
done under fear is on the whole voluntary. At the 
same time, fear sometimes excuses from the obser- 
vance of a law, or of a contract, which from the 
way in which it was made was never meant to bind 
in so hard a case. Not all contracts, however, are 
of this accommodating nature ; and still less, all laws. 
But even where the law binds, the penalty of the 
law is sometimes not incurred, when the law was 
broken through fear. 

Readings, — Kv.^Eth,, III., i.; St.Thos., la 2as, q. 6, 
art. 3 ; ih., q. 6, art. 6, 8 ; ih., q. 77, art, 6. 

Section II. — Of the determinants of morality in any given 
action, 

1. The morality of any given action is determined by 
three elements, the end in view, the means taken, and the 
circumstances that accompany the taki^ig of the said means 
Whoever knows this principle, does not thereby know 
the right and wrong of every action, but he knows 
how to go about the enquiry. It is a rule of 
diagnosis. 

2. In order to know whether what a man does 
befits him as a man to do, the first thing to examine 
is that which he mainly desires and wills in his 
action. Now the end is more willed and desired 
than the means. He who steals to commit adultery, 



OF HUMAN ACTS. 



says Aristotle, is more of an adulterer than a thief. 
The end in view is what lies nearest to a man'? heart 
as he acts. On that his mind is chiefly b«^nt ; on 
that his main purpose is fixed. Though the end is 
last in the order of execution, it is first and foremost 
in the order of intention. Therefore the end in view 
enters into morality more deeply than any other 
element of the action. It it not, however, the most 
obvious determinant, because it is the last point to 
be gained ; and because, while the means are taken 
openly, the end is often a secret locked up in the 
heart of the doer, the same means leading to many 
ends, as the road to a city leads to many homes 
and resting-places. Conversely, one end may be 
prosecuted by many means, as there are many roads 
converging upon one goal. 

3. If morality were determined by the end in 
view, and by that alone, the doctrine would hold 
that the end justifies the means. That doctrine is 
false, because the moral character of a human act 
depends on the thing willed, or object of volition, 
according as it is or is not a fit object. Now the 
object of volition is not only the end in view, but 
likewise the means chosen. Besides the end, the 
means are likewise willed. Indeed, the means are 
willed more immediately even than the end, as they 
have to be taken first. 

4. A good action, like any other good thing, must 
possess a certain requisite fulness of being, proper to 
itself. As it is not enough for the physical excel- 
lence of a man to have the bare essentials, a body 
with a soul animating it, but there is needed 3 



DETERMINANTS OF MORALITY. 



33 



certain grace of form, colour, agility, and many 
accidental qualities besides ; so for a good act it is 
not enough that proper means be taken to a proper 
end, but they must be taken by a proper person, at 
a proper place and time, in a proper manner, and 
with manifold other circumstances of propriety. 

5. The end in view may be either single, as when 
you forgive an injury solely for the love of Christ : 
or multiple co-ordinate, as when you forgive both for 
the love of Christ and for the mediation of a friend, 
and are disposed to forgive on either ground sepa- 
rately; or multiple subordinate, as when you would 
not have forgiven on the latter ground alone, but 
forgive the more easily for its addition, having 
been ready, however, to forgive on the former 
alone : or cumulative, as when you forgive on a 
number of grounds collectively, on no one of which 
would you have forgiven apart from the rest. 

6. Where there is no outward action, but only 
an internal act, and the object of that act is some 
good that is willed for its own sake, there can be no 
question of means taken, as the end in view is 
immediately attained. 

7. The means taken and the circumstances of 
those means enter into the morality of the act, 
formally as they are seen by the intellect, materially 
as they are in themselves. (See what is said of 
ignorance, c. iii., s. i., nn. 3 — 5, p. 27.) This explains 
the difference between formal and material sin. A 
material sin would be formal also, did the agent know 
what he was doing. No sin is culpable that is not 
formal. But, as has been said, there may be a cul- 

P 



34 



OP HUMAN ACTS. 



pable perversion of the intellect, so that the man is 
the author of his own obliquity or defect of vision. 
When Saul persecuted the Christians, he probably 
sinned materially, not formally. When Caiphas 
spoke the truth without knowing it, he said well 
materially, but ill formally. 

8. In looking at the means taken and the circum- 
stances that accompany those means, it is important 
to have a ready rule for pronouncing what particular 
belongs to the means and what to the circumstances. 
Thus Clytemnestra deals her husband Agamemnon 
a deadly stroke with an axe, partly for revenge, 
partly that she may take to herself another consort ; 
is the deadliness of the blow part of the means 
taken or only an accompanying circumstance ? 
It is part of the means taken. The means taken 
include every particular that is willed and chosen as 
making for the end in view. The fatal character of 
the blow does make to that end ; if Agamemnon 
does not die, the revenge will not be complete, and 
life with Aegisthus will be impossible. On the other 
hand, the fact that Clytemnestra is the wife of the 
man whom she murders, is not a point that her will 
rests upon as furthering her purpose at all ; it is an 
accompanying circumstance. This method of distin- 
guishing means from circumstance is of great value 
in casuistry. 

g. It is clear that not every attendant circum- 
stance affects the morality of the means taken. 
Thus the blow under which Agamemnon sank was 
neither more nor less guiltily struck because it was 
dealt with an axe, because it was under pretence of 



DETERMINANTS OF MORALITY. 55 

giving him a bath, or because his feet were entangled 
in a long robe. These circumstances are all irrelevant. 
Those only are relevant which attach some special 
reasonableness or unreasonableness to the thing done 
Thus the provocation that Clytemnestra had from 
her husband's introduction of Cassandra into hei 
house made her act of vengeance less unreasonable : 
on the other hand it was rendered more unreasonable 
by the circumstance of the dear and holy tie that binds 
wife to husband. The provocation and the relation- 
ship were two relevant circumstances in that case. 

10. But it happens sometimes that a circum- 
stance only affects the reasonableness of an action 
on the supposition of some previous circumstance so 
affecting it. Thus to carry off a thing in large or 
small quantities does not affect the reasonableness of 
the carrying, unless there be already some other 
circumstance attached that renders the act good or 
evil ; as for instance, if the goods that are being 
removed are stolen property. Circumstances of this 
sort are called aggravating — or, as the case may be, 
extenuating — circum.stances. Circumstances that of 
themselves, and apart from any previous supposition, 
make the thing done peculiarly reasonable or unrea- 
sonable, are called specifying circumstances. They 
are so called, because they place the action in 
some species of virtue or vice ; whereas aggravating 
or extenuating circumstances add to, or take off 
from, the good or evil of the action in that species 
of virtue or vice to which it already belongs. 

11. A variety of specifying circumstances may 
place one and the same action in many various 



36 



OF HUMAN ACTS. 



species of virtue or vice. Thus a religious robbing 
bis parents would sin at once against justice, piety, 
and religion. A nun preferring death to dishonour 
practises three virtues, chastity, fortitude, and 
religion. 

12. The means chosen may be of four several 
characters :-— 

{a) A thing evil of itself and inexcusable under 
all conceivable circumstances ; for instance, blas- 
phemy, idolatry, lying. 

(6) Needing excuse, as the killing of a man, the 
looking at an indecent object. Such things are not 
to be done except under certain circumstances and 
with a grave reason. Thus indecent sights may be 
met in the discharge of professional duty. In that 
case indeed they cease to be indecent. They are 
then only indecent when they are viewed without 
cause. The absence of a good motive in a case like 
this commonly implies the presence of a bad one. 

(c) Indifferent, as walking or sitting down. 

(d) Good of itself, but liable to be vitiated by 
circumstances, as prayer and almsgiving ; the good 
of such actions may be destroyed wholly or in part 
by their being done out of a vain motive, or unsea- 
sonably, or indiscreetly. 

13. It is said, If thy eye be single, thy whole 
body shall be lightsome." (St. Matt, vi., 22.) The 
eye is the intention contemplating the end in view. 
Whoever has placed a good end before him, and 
regards it steadil}' with a well-ordered love, never 
swerving in his alfection from the way that reason 
would have him love, must needs take towards his 



DETERMINANTS OF MORALITY. 37 



end those means, and those only, which are in them- 
selves reasonable and just : as it is written : " Thou 
shalt follow justly after that which is just." (Deut. 
xvi., 20.) Thus I am building a church to the glory 
of God ; money runs short : I perceive that by 
signing a certain contract that must mean grievous 
oppression of the poor, I shall save considerable 
expense, whereas, if I refuse, the works will have to 
be abandoned for want of funds. If I have purely 
the glory of God before my eyes, I certainly shall 
not sign that contract : for injustice I know can bear 
no fruit of Divine glory. But if I am bent upon 
having the building up in any case, of course I shall 
sign : but then my love for the end in view is no 
longer pure and regulated by reason : it is not God 
but myself that I am seeking in the work. Thus an 
end entirely just, holy, and pure, purifies and sancti- 
fies the m.eans, not formally, by investing with a 
character of justice means in themselves unjust, 
for that is impossible, — the leopard cannot change 
his spots, — but by way of elimination, removing 
unjust means as ineligible to my purpose, and 
leaving me only those means to choose from which 
are in themselves just. 

14. With means in themselves indifferent, the 
case is otherwise. A holy and pious end does 
formally sanctify those means, while a wicked end 
vitiates them. I beg the reader to observe what sort 
of means are here in question. There is no question 
of means in themselves or in their circumstances 
unjust, as theft, lying, murder, but of such indif- 
ferent things as reading, writing, painting, singing, 



38 



OF HUMAN ACTS. 



travelling. Whoever travels to commit sin at the 
end of his journey, his very travelling, so far as it is 
referred to that end, is part of his sin : it is a wicked 
journey that he takes. And he who travels to 
worship at some shrine or place of pilgrimage, 
includes his journey in his devotion. The end in 
view there sanctifies means in themselves indifferent. 

15. As a great part of the things that we do are 
indifferent as well in themselves as in the circum- 
stances of the doing of them, the moral character of 
our lives depends largely on the ends that we 
habitually propose to ourselves. One man's great 
thought is how to make money ; what he reads, 
writes, says, where he goes, where he elects to 
reside, his very eating, drinking and personal expen- 
diture, all turns on what he calls making his fortune. 
It is all to gain money — quocunqtce inodo rem. Another 
is active for bettering the condition of the labouring 
classes : a third for the suppression of vice. These 
three men go some way together in a common orbit 
of small actions, alike to the eye, but morally unlike, 
because of the various guiding purposes for which 
they are done. Hence, when we consider such 
pregnant final ends as the service of God and the 
glory of a world to come, it appears how vast is the 
alteration in the moral line and colouring of a man's 
life, according to his practical taking up or setting 
aside of these great ends. 

16. We must beware however of an exaggeration 
here. The final end of action is often latent, not 
explicitly considered. A fervent worshipper of God 
wishes to refer his whole self with all that he does 



DETERMINANTS OF MORALITY. 



39 



to the Divine glory and service. Yet such a one 
will eat, drink, and be merry with his friends, not 
thinking of God at the time. Still, supposing him 
to keep within the bounds of temperance, he is 
serving God and doing good actions. But what of 
a man who has entirely broken away from God, 
what of his eating, drinking, and other actions that 
are of their kind indifferent ? We cannot call them 
sins : there is nothing wrong about them, neither in 
the thing done, nor in the circumstances of the 
doing, nor in the intention. Pius V. condemned the 
proposition : *' All the works of infidels are sins." 
Neither must we call such actions indifferent in the 
individual who does them, supposing them to be 
true human acts, according to the definition, and not 
done merely mechanically. They are not indifferent, 
because they receive a certain measure of natural 
goodness from the good natural purpose which they 
serve, namely, the conservation and well-being of 
the agent. Every human act is either good or evil in 
him who does it. I speak of natural goodness only. 

17. The effect consequent upon an action is distin- 
guishable from the action itself, from which it is not 
unfrequently separated by a considerable interval of 
time, as the death of a man from poison adminis- 
tered a month before. The effect consequent enters 
into morality only in so far as it is either chosen 
as a means or intended as an end (nn. 2, 3, p. 31), 
or is annexed as a relevant circumstance to the 
means chosen (n. 9, p. 34.). Once the act is done, 
it matters nothing to morality whether the effect 
consequent actually ensues or not, provided no new 



46 



OF HUMAN ACTS. 



act be elicited thereupon, whether of commission 
or of culpable omission to prevent. It matters 
not to morality, but it does matter to the agent's 
claim to reward or liability to punishment at 
the hands of human legislators civil and eccle- 
siastical. 

i8. As soul and body make one man, so the 
inward and outward act — as the will to strike and 
the actual blow struck — are one human act. The 
outward act gives a certain physical completeness 
to the inward. Moreover the inward act is no 
thorough-going thing, if it stops short of outward 
action where the opportunity offers. Otherwise, 
the inward act may be as good or as bad morally 
as inward and outward act together. The mere 
wish to kill, where the deed is impossible, may 
be as wicked as wish and deed conjoined. It 
may be, but commonly it will not, for this reason, 
that the outward execution of the deed reacts 
upon the will and calls it forth with greater 
intensity ; the will as it were expands where it 
finds outward vent. There is no one who has 
not felt the relative mildness of inward feelings 
of impatience or indignation, compared with those 
engendered by speaking out one's mind. Often 
also the outward act entails a long course of pre- 
paration, all during which the inward will is 
sustained and frequently renewed, as in a carefully 
planned burglary. 

Readings. — St.Thos., la 2oe, q. i8, art. T ; ib,, q. i8, 
art. 2, in corp., ad. i ; q. i8, art. 3, in corp., ad 
2; ib,, q. 18, art. 4 — 6 ; ib., q. 18, art. 8, in corp., ad 



PASSIONS JN GENERAL. 



2, 3; ib,, q. 18, art. 9, in corp., ad 3; ib,, q. 18, art. 10, 
3; ib,, q. 18, art. 11, in corp.; ib,, q. 20, art. 4, in 
corp. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF PASSIONS. 
Section I. — Of Passions in General, 

I, A PASSION is defined to be : ^ movement of the 
irrational part of the soul, attended by a notable altera- 
tion of the body, on the apprehension of good or evil 
The soul is made up of intellect, will, and sensible 
appetite. The first two are rational, the third 
irrational : the third is the seat of the passionr. 
In a disembodied spirit, or an angel, there are 
senses, no sensible appetite, no passions. The 
angel, or the departed soul, can love and hate, feat 
and desire, rejoice and grieve, but these are not 
passions in the pure spirit, they are acts of intellect 
and will alone. So man also often loves and hates, 
and does other acts that are synonymous with cor- 
responding passions, and yet no passion is there. 
The man is working with his calm reason ; his 
irrational soul is not stirred. To an author, when 
he is in the humour for it, it is a delight to be 
writing, but not a passionate delight. The will finds 
satisfaction in the act : the irrational soul is not 
affected by it. Or a penitent is sorry for his sin : 
he sincerely regrets it before God : his will is 
heartily turned away, and wishes that that sin had 



OF PASSIONS. 



never been : at the same time his eye is dry, 
his features unmoved, not a sigh does he utter, 
and yet he is truly sorry. It is important tc 
bear these facts in mind ; else we shall be con- 
tinually mistaking for passions what are pure acta 
of will, or vice versay misled by the identity of 
name. 

2. The great mark of a passion is its sensible 
working of itself out upon the body, — what Dr. Bain 
calls "the diffusive wave of emotion." Without 
this mark there is no passion, but with it are other 
mental states besides passions, as we define them. 
All strong emotion affects the body sensibly, but not 
all emotions are passions. There are emotions that 
arise from and appertain to the rational portion 
of the soul. Such are Surprise, Laughter, Shame. 
There is no sense of humour in any but rational 
beings ; and though dogs look ashamed and horses 
betray curiosity, that is only inasmuch as in these 
higher animals there is something analogous to what 
is reason in man. Moreover passions are conversant 
with good and evil affecting sense, but the objects 
of such emotions as those just mentioned are not 
good and evil as such, common parlance notwith- 
standing, whereby we are said to laugh at a bon moty 
or " a good thing." 

3. Love is a generic passion, having for its 
species desire and delight^ the contraries of which 
are abhorrence and pain. Desire is of absent good ; 
abhorrence is of absent evil; delight is in present 
good; pain is at present evil. The good and the evil 
which is the object of any passion must be appre- 



PASSIONS m GENERAL. 



43 



hended by sense, or by imagination in a sensible 
way, whether itself be a thing of sense or not. 

4. Desire and abhorrence, delight and pain, 
are conversant with good and evil simply. But 
good is often attainable only by an effort, and evil 
avoidable by an effort. The effort that good costs 
to attain casts a shade of evil or undesirableness 
over it : we may shrink from the effort while coveting 
the good. Again, the fact of evil being at all avoid- 
able is a good thing about such evil. If we call 
evil black, and good white, avoidable evil will be 
black just silvering into grey: and arduous good 
will be white with a cloud on it. And if the white 
attracts, and the black repels the appetite, it appears 
that arduous good is somewhat distasteful, to wit, to 
the faint-hearted; and avoidable, or vincible, evil has 
its attraction for the man of spirit. About these 
two objects, good hard of getting and evil hard of 
avoidance, arise four other passions, hope and despair 
about the former, fear and daring about the latter. 
Hope goes out towards a difficult good : despair flies 
from it, the difficulty here being more repellent than 
the good is attractive. Fear flies from a threatening 
.evil : while daring goes up to the same, drawn by 
the likelihood of vanquishing it. Desire and abhor- 
rence, delight and pain, hope and despair, fear and 
daring, with anger and hatred (of which presently), 
complete our list of passions. 

5. Aristotle and his school of old, called Peri- 
patetics, recommended the moderation of the 
passions, not their extirpation. The Stoics on the 
other hand contended that the model man, the sage, 



44 



OF PASSIONS. 



should be totally devoid of passions. This cele- 
brated dispute turned largely on the two schools 
not understanding the same thing by the word 
passion. Yet not entirely so. There was a residue of 
real difference, and it came to this. If the sensitive 
appetite stirs at all, it must stir in one or other of 
nine ways corresponding to the nine passions which 
we have enumerated. Such an emotion as Laughter 
affects the imagination and the sensitive part of 
man, and of course the body visibly, but it does not 
stir the sensitive appetite, since it does not prompt 
to action. To say then that a man has no passions, 
means that the sensitive appetite never stirs within 
him, but is wholly dead. But this is impossible, as 
the Stoic philosopher was fain to confess when 
he got frightened in a storm at sea. Having no 
passions cannot in any practical sense mean having 
no movements of the sensitive appetite, for that will 
be afoot of its own proper motion independent of 
reason : but it may mean cherishing no passions, 
allowing none to arise unresisted, but suppressing 
their every movement to the utmost that the will can. 
In that sense it is a very intelligible and practical 
piece of advice, that the wise man should labour to 
have no passions. It is the advice embodied in 
Horace's Nil admirari, Talleyrand's "No zeal," 
Beaconsfield's " Beware of enthusiasm." It would 
have man to work like a scientific instrument, calm as 
a chronometer, regulated by reason alone. This was 
the Stoic teaching, this the perfection that they 
inculcated, quite a possible goal to make for, if not 
to attain. And it is worth a wise man's while to 



PASSIONS IN GENERAL, 



45 



consider, whether he should bend his efforts in this 
direction or not. The determination here taken and 
acted upon will elaborate quite a different character 
of man one way or the other. The effort made as 
the Stoics direct, would mean no yielding to excite- 
ment, no poetry, no high-strung devotion, no rapture, 
no ecstasy, no ardour of love, no earnest rhetoric 
spoken or listened to, no mourning, no rejoicing 
other than the most conventional, to the persistent 
smothering of whatever is natural and really felt, no 
tear of pity freely let flow, no touch of noble anger 
responded to, no scudding before the breeze ot 
indignation, — all this, that reason may keep on the 
even tenour of her way undisturbed. 

6. The fault in this picture is that it is not the 
picture of a man, but of a spirit. He who being 
man should try to realize it in himself, would fall 
short of human perfection. For though the sensi- 
tive appetite is distinguished from the will, and the 
two may clash and come in conflict, yet they are not 
two wholly independent powers, but the one man 
is both will and sensitive appetite, and he rarely 
operates according to one power without the other 
being brought into corresponding play. There is a 
similar concomitance of the operations of intellect 
and imagination. What attracts the sensitive 
appetite, commonly allures also the affective will, 
though on advertence the elective will may reject it. 
On the other hand, a strong affection and election 
of the will cannot be without the sensitive appetite 
being stirred, and that so strongly that the motion is 
notable in the body, — in other words, is a passion. 



46 



OF PASSIONS. 



Passion is the natural and in a certain degree the 
inseparable adjunct of strong volition. To check 
one is to check the other. Not only is the passion 
repressed by repressing the volition, but the repres- 
sion of the passion is also the repression of the 
volition. A man then who did his best to repress 
all movements of passion indiscriminately, would 
lay fetters on his will, lamentable and cruel and 
impolitic fetters, where his will was bent on any 
object good and honourable and well-judged. 

7. Again, man's will is reached by two channels, 
from above downwards and from below upwards : it 
is reached through the reason and through the 
imagination and senses. By the latter channel it 
often receives evil impressions, undoubtedly, but 
not unfrequently by the former also. Reason may 
be inconsiderate, vain, haughty, mutinous, unduly 
sceptical. The abuse is no justification for closing 
either channel. Now the channel of the senses and 
of the imagination is the wider, and in many cases 
affords the better passage of the two. The will that 
is hardly reached by reason, is approached and won 
by a pathetic sight, a cry of enthusiasm, a threat 
that sends a tremor through the limbs. Rather 
I should say the affective will is approached in this 
way : for it remains with the elective will, on ad- 
vertence and consultation with reason, to decide 
whether or not it shall be won to consent. But 
were it not for the channel of passion, this will could 
never have been approached at all even by reasons 
the most cogent. Rhetoric often succeeds, where 
mere dry logic would have been thrown away. God 



PASSIONS IN GENERAL, 



4V 



help vast numbers of the human race, if their wills 
were approachable only through their reasons 1 They 
would indeed be fixtures. 

8. Another fact to notice is the liability of 
reason's gaze to become morbid and as it were 
inflamed by unremitting exercise. I do not here 
allude to hard study, but to overcurious scanning 
of the realities of this life, and the still greater 
realities and more momentous possibilities of the 
world to come. There is a sense of the surroundings 
being too much for us, an alarm and a giddiness, that 
comes of sober matter-of-fact thought over-much 
prolonged. Then it happens that one or more 
undeniable truths are laid hold of, and considered in 
strong relief and in isolation from the rest : the result 
is a distorted and partial view of truth as a whole^ 
and therewith the mind is troubled. Here the 
kindlier passions, judiciously allowed to play, come 
in to soothe the wound and soreness of pure intel- 
lect, too keen in its workings for one who is not yet 
a pure spirit. 

g. Moral good and evil are predicable only of 
luunan acts, in the technical sense of the term. (c. i,, 
nn. 2 — 4, p. 41.) As the passions by definition (c. iv., 
s. i., n. I, p. 41) are not human acts, they can never be 
morally evil of themselves. But they are an occasion 
of moral evil in this way. They often serve to wake 
up the slumbering Reason. To that end it is 
necessary that they should start up of themselves 
without the call of Reason. This would be no 
inconvenience, if the instant Reason awoke, and 
adverted to the tumult and stir of Passion, she could 



48 



OF PASSIONS. 



take command of it, and where she saw lit, quell it. 
But Reason has no such command, except in cases 
where she has acquired it by years of hard fighting. 
Passion once afoot holds on her course against the 
dictate of Reason. True, so long as it remains mere 
Passion, and Reason is not dragged away by it, no 
consent of the will given, no voluntary act elicited, 
still less carried into outward effect, — so long as 
things remain thus, however Passion may rage, 
there is no moral evil done. But there is a great 
temptation, and in great temptation many men fall. 
The evil is the act of free will, but the pressure on 
the will is the pressure of Passion. But Passion 
happily is a 5'Oung colt amenable to discipline. 
Where the assaults of Passion are resolutely and 
piously withstood, and the incentives thereto 
avoided — unnatural and unnecessary incentives I 
mean — Passion itself acquires a certain habit of 
obedience to Reason, which habit is moral virtue. 
Of that presently, 

TO. In a men of confirmed habits of moral 
virtue. Passion starts up indeed independently of 
Reason, but then Reason ordinarily finds little diffi- 
culty in regulating the Passion so aroused. In a 
certain high and extraordinary condition of human 
nature, not only has Reason entire mastery over 
Passion wherever she finds it astir, but Passion 
cannot stir in the first instance, without Reason 
calling upon it to do so. In this case the torpor of 
the will deprecated above (n. 7) is not to be feared, 
because Reason is so vigorous and so masterful as to 
be adequate to range everywhere and meet all emer- 



OF DESIRE. 



49 



gencies without the goad of Passion. This state is 
called by divines the state of integrity. In it Adam 
was before he sinned. It was lost at the Fall, and 
has not been restored by the Redemption. It is not 
a thing in any way due to human nature : nothing 
truly natural to man was forfeited by Adam's sin. 
It is no point of holiness, no guerdon of victory, 
this state of integrity, but rather a being borne on 
angel's wings above the battle. But one who has 
no battle in his own breast against Passion, may yet 
suffer and bleed and die under exterior persecution : 
nay, he may, if he wills, let in Passion upon himself, 
to fear and grieve, when he need not. So did the 
Second Adam in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

Readings. — St. Thos., la, q. 8i, art. 2, in corp.; 
id.y la 236, q. 23, art. i, in corp. ; ib., q. 23, art. 2, in 
corp. ; Cicero, Tusc. Disp., iv., cc. 17 — 26; St. Aug., 
De Civitate Dei, ix., cc. 4, 5 ; Ar, Eth., III., v., 3, 4; 
ib.y I., xiii., 15 — 17 ; St. Thos., 3a, q. 15, art. 4; id., 
la 2se, q. 59, art. 5 ; Plato, Timceus, 69, B, E : 70, A. 

Section II. — Of Desire. 

I. Desires are either physical cravings, by moderns 
called appetites; or physical desires or tastes, called 
desires proper. The appetites have their beginning 
in bodily uneasiness. They are felt needs of some- 
thing required for the animal maintenance of the 
individual or of the race. The objects of the 
several appetites are Meat and Drink, Warmth or 
Coolness, Exercise and Repose, Sleep, Sex. The 
object of mere appetite is marked by quantity only, 
not by quahty. That is to say, the thing is sought 



50 



OF PASSIONS. 



for in the vague, in a certain amount sufficient to 
supply the want, but not this or that variety of the 
thing. The cry of a hungry man is, " Give me to 
eat," if very hungry, " Give me much : " but so far 
as he is under the mere dominion of appetite he 
does not crave any particular article of food, vege- 
table or animal : he wants quantity merely. So of 
thirst, so of all thu appetites, where there is nothing 
else but appetite present. 

2. But if a thirsty man cries for champagne, or 
a hungry man fancies a venison pasty, there is 
another element beyond appetite in that demand. 
On the matter of the plwsical craving there is 
stamped the form of a psychical desire. The 
psychical element prescribes a quality of the objects 
sought. The thirsty man thus prompted no longer 
wants drink but wine : the man mewed up within 
doors no longer calls for exercise, but for a horse or 
a bicycle. It is obvious that in man the appetites 
generally pass into the further shape of psychical 
desire. It is when the appetite is vehement, or the 
man is one who makes slight study of his animal 
wants, that pure appetite, sheer physical craving, is 
best shown. Darius flying before his conqueror is 
ready to drink at any source, muddy or clear, a drink 
is all that he wants : it is all that is wanted by 
St. Paul the first Hermit. But your modern lounger 
at the clubs, what variety of liquors are excogitated 
to please his palate 1 

3. Not all psychical desires are on the matter of 
appetite ; they may be fixed on any good whatsoever 
of body or of mind. Many psychical desires are 



OF DESIRE. 



51 



not passions at all, but reside exclusively in the 
superior part of the soul, in the will prompted by 
the understanding, and do not affect the body in any 
sensible way. Such for instance is the great desire 
of happiness. Those desires that are passions are 
prompted, not by the understanding, but by the 
imagination or fancy, imaging to itself some parti- 
cular good, not good in general, for that the under- 
standing contemplates. Fancy paints the picture ; 
or if sense presents it, fancy appropriates and embel- 
lishes it : the sensitive appetite fastens upon the 
representation : the bodily organs sensibly respond ; 
and there is the passion of psychical desire. 

4. Physical cravings, or appetites, have limited objects : 
the objects of psychical desires may be unlimited, A 
thirsty man thirsts not for an ocean, but for drink 
quantum sufficit : give him that and the appetite is 
gone. But the miser covets all the money that 
he can get ; the voluptuary ranges land and sea in 
search of a new pleasure : the philosopher ever longs 
for a higher knowledge : the saint is indefatigable in 
doing good. Whatever a man takes to be an end in 
itself, not simply a means, that he desires without 
end or measure. What he desires as a means, he 
desires under a limitation, so far forth as it makes 
for the end, so much and no more. As Aristotle 
says of the processes of art, " the end in view is the 
limit," Trepan to reXo? (of. c. ii., s. iii., n. 3, p. 15) 
Whatever is desired as an end in itself, is taken to 
be a part of happiness, or to represent happiness. 
Happiness and the object that gives happiness is 
the one thing that man desires for itself, and desires 



52 



OF PASSIONS. 



without end or measure. Unfortunately he is often 
mistaken in the choice of this object. He often 
takes for an end what is properly only a means. 
They "whose god is their belly," have made this 
mistake in regard of the gratification of appetite. 
It is not appetite proper that has led to this per- 
version, but psychical desire, or appetite inflamed 
by the artificial stimulus of imagination. For one 
who would be temperate, it is more important to 
control his imagination than to trouble about his 
appetite. Appetite exhausts itself, sometimes within 
the bounds of what is good for the subject, some- 
times beyond them, but still within some bounds; but 
there is no limit to the cravings bred of imagination. 

5. By this canon a man may try himself to dis- 
cover whether or not a favourite amusement is gain- 
ing too much upon him. An amusement is properly 
a means to the end, that a man may come away 
from it better fitted to do the serious work of his 
life. Pushed beyond a certain point, the amuse- 
ment ceases to minister to this end. The wise man 
drops it at that point. But if one knows not where 
to stop : or if when stopped in spite of himself, he 
is restless till he begin again, and never willingly 
can forego any measure of the diversion that comes 
within his reach, the means in that case has passed 
into an end : he is enslaved to that amusement, 
inasmuch as he will do anything and evei^^ thing for 
the sake of it. Thus some men serve pl^asure^ and 
other men money. 

6. Hence is apparent the folly of supposing that 
crimes against property are prever.dble simply by 



OF DESIRE. 



53 



placing it within the power of all members of the 
community easily to earn an honest livelihood, and 
therewith the satisfaction of all their natural needs. 
It is not merely to escape cold and hunger that men 
turn to burglary or fraudulent dealing; it is more 
for the gratification of a fancy, the satisfaction of 
an inordinate desire. Great crimes are not com- 
mitted " to keep the wolf from the door," but 
because of the wolf in the heart, the overgrown 
psychical desire, which is bred in many a well- 
nourished, warmly clad, comfortably housed, highly 
educated citizen. There is a sin born of " fulness 
of bread." 

Readings. — St. Thos., la 28e, q. 30, art. 3, in 
corp. ; ib., q, 30, art. 4, in corp. ; Ar., Eth., III., xi., 
I — 4: Ar., PoL, I., ix., 13; ib., II., vii., 11 — 13. 

N.B. — The division of desires into physical and 
psychical is first suggested by Plato, who (Rep. 558 
D to 559 c) divides them as necessary and tin- 
necessary. Unnecessary desires he treats as evil. 
What Plato calls a necessary, Aristotle calls a physical, 
and St. Thomas a natural desire. Unfortunately, 
Aristotle and St. Thomas had but one word for our 
English two, physical and natural. Desires that are 
not physical, not natural nor necessary to man in 
his animal capacity, may be highly natural and 
becoming to man as he is a reasonable being, or 
they may be highly unbecoming. These psychical 
desires, called by St. Thomas not natural, take in 
at once the noblest and the basest aspirations oi 
humanity. 



OF PASSIONS. 



Section III. — Of Delight, 

1 . Delight like desire may be either physical or 
psychical. All that has been said above of desire 
under this division applies also to delight, which is 
the realization of desire. This division does not 
altogether fall in with that into sensual delights and 
intellectual delights. A professional wine-taster could 
hardly be said to find intellectual delight in a 
bottle of good Champagne, real Veuve-Clicquot : yet 
certainly his is a psychical delight, no mere un- 
sophisticated gratification of appetite. Sensual 
delights then are those delights which are founded 
on the gratification of appetite, whether simple — 
in which case the delight is physical — or studied 
and fancy-wrought appetite, the gratification of 
which is psychical delight. Intellectual delights on 
the other hand are those that come of the exercise 
of intellect, not unsupported by imagination, but 
where appetite enters not at all, or only as a remote 
adjunct, albeit the delight may turn upon some 
sight or sound, as of music, or of a fine range of 
hills. Or the object may be a thing of intellect, 
pure and removed from sense as far as an object 
of human contemplation can be, for instance, the 
first elements of matter, freewill, the immensity of 
God. The study of such objects yields a purer 
intellectual delight than that of the preceding. But 
this is a high ground and a keen upper air, where 
few can tread and breathe. 

2. A man has more complacency in himself upon 
attaining to some intellectual delight than upon a 



OF DELIGHT. 



55 



sensual satisfaction : he is prouder to have solved a 
problem than to have enjoyed his dinner. Also, 
he would rather forego the capacity of sensual enjoy- 
ment than that of intellectual pleasure ; rather lose 
his sense of taste than his science or his scholar- 
ship, if he has any notable amount of either. 
Again, put sensual delight in one scale, and in the 
other the intellectual delight of honour, no worthy 
specimen of a man will purchase the pleasure at 
the price of honour. The disgrace attaching to 
certain modes of enjoyment is sufficient to make 
men shun them, very pleasant though they be to 
sense. Again, sensual delight is a passing thing, 
waxing and waning : but intellectual delight is steady, 
grasped and held firmly as a whole. But sensual 
delight comes more welcome of the two in this 
that it removes a pre-existing uneasiness, as hunger, 
weariness, nervous prostration, thus doing a medi- 
cinal office : whereas no such office attaches in the 
essential nature of things to intellectual delight, 
as that does not presuppose any uneasiness ; and 
though it may remove uneasiness, the removal is 
difficult, because the uneasiness itself is an obstacle 
to the intellectual effort that must be made to derive 
any intellectual delight. Sensual enjoyment is the 
cheaper physician, and ailing mortals mostly resort 
to that door. 

3. " I will omit much usual declamation on the 
dignity and capacity of our nature : the superiority 
of the soul to the body, of the rational to the 
animal part of our constitution ; upon the worthi« 
ness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, 



56 



OF PASSIONS. 



or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others: 
because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but 
in continuance and intensity." (Paley, Moral Philo- 
sophy, bk. i., c. vi.) 

In opposition to the above it is here laid down 
that delights do not differ in continuance and intensityt 
that is, in quantity, alo7ie, hut likewise in quality, that 
is, some are nobler, better, and more becoming a 
man than others, and therefore preferable on other 
grounds than those of mere continuance and inten- 
sity. I wish to show that the more pleasant 
pleasure is not always the better pleasure ; that 
even the pleasure which is more durable, and 
thereby more pleasant in the long run, is not the 
better of the two simply as carrying the greater 
cumulus of pleasure. If this is shown, it will follow 
that pleasure is not identical with good ; or that 
pleasure is not happiness, not the last end of man. 

4. Delight comes of activity, not necessarily of 
change, except so far as activity itself involves 
change, as it always does in mortal man. Delight 
sits upon activity, as the bloom upon youth. Bloom 
is the natural sign of maturity ; and the delight 
that we come to take in doing a thing shows that 
we are at least beginning to do it well : our activity 
is approaching perfection. In this sense it is said 
that delight perfects activity. As the activity, so will be 
the delight. But the activity will be as the power 
of which it is an exercise. Powers like in kind 
will s-upply like activities, and these again will yield 
delights alike in kind. There is no difference of 
quahty in such delights, they differ in quantity 



OF DELIGHT. 



57 



alone. Thus taste and smell are two senses : 
the difference between them can hardly be called 
one of kind : therefore the delights of smelling and 
of tasting fall under one categor}^ We may ex- 
change so much smell for an equal amount of taste : 
it is a mere matter of quantity. But between sight 
and hearing on the one hand, and taste and smell 
and touch on the other, there is a wider difference, 
due to the fact that intellect allies itself more 
readily to the operation of the two former senses. 

5. Widest of all differences is that between sense 
and intellect. To explain this difference in full 
belongs to Psychology. Enough to say here that 
the object of sense is always particular, bound up 
in circumstances of present time and place, as thh 
horse : while the object of intellect is universal, as 
horse simply. The human intellect never works 
without the concurrence either of sense or of imagi- 
nation, which is as it were sense at second hand. 
As pure intellectual operation is never found in man, 
so neither is pure intellectual delight, like that of an 
angel. Still, as even in man sense and intellect 
are two powers differing in kind, so must their 
operations differ in kind, and the delights conse- 
quent upon those operations. Therefore, unless 
Paley would have been willing to allow that the 
rational and animal parts of our nature differ only 
as more and less — which is tantamount to avowing 
that man is but a magnified brute — he ought 
not to have penned his celebrated utterance, that 
pleasures differ only in continuance and intensity : 
he should have admitted that they differ likewise 



58 



OF PASSIONS. 



in kind ; or in other words, that pleasures differ in 
quahty as well as in quantity. The goodness of a 
pleasure, then, is not the mere amount of it. To 
repeat St. Augustine's reflection on the drunken 
Milanese : ** It makes a difference what source a 
man draws his deHght from." * As in man reason 
is nobler than sense, preferable, and a better good 
to its possessor — for reason it is that makes him 
man and raises him above the brute — so the use 
of the reason and the delight that comes thereof is 
nobler, preferable, and a better good to him than 
the pleasure that is of the mere operation of his 
animal nature. A little of the nobler delight out- 
weighs a vast volume of the baser : not that the 
nobler is the pleasanter, but because it is the nobler. 
Nor can it be pretended that the nobler prevails as 
being the more durable, and thereby likely to prove 
the pleasanter in the long run. The nobler is better 
at the time and in itself, because it is the more 
human delight and characteristic of the higher 
species. I have but to add that what is better in 
itself is not better under all circumstances. The 
best life of man can only be lived at hitervals. 
The lower operations and the delights that go with 
them have a medicinal power to restore the vigour 
that has become enfeebled by a lengthened exercise 
of the higher faculties. At those " dead points " 
food and fiddling are better than philosophy. 

6. This medicinal or restorative virtue of delight 
is a fact to bear in mind in debating the question 
how far it is right to act for the pleasure that the 

• Interest wide quis guudeat. (S. Aug., Con/ess., vi., 6.) 



OF DELIGHT 



59 



action gives. It is certainly wrong to act for mere 
animal gratification. Such gratification is a stimulus 
to us to do that which makes for the well-being of 
our nature : to fling away all intention of any good 
other than the dehght of the action, is to mistake 
the incentive for the end proposed. But this is a 
doctrine easily misunderstood. An example may 
save it from being construed too rigidly. Suppose a 
man has a vinery, and being fond of fruit he goes 
there occasionally, and eats, not for hunger, but 
as he says, because he likes grapes. He seems to 
act for mere pleasure : yet who shall be stern 
enough to condemn him, so that he exceed not in 
quantity ? If he returns from the vinery in a miore 
amiable and charitable mood, more satisfied v/ith 
Providence, more apt to converse with men and do 
his work in the commonwealth, who can deny that 
in acting in view of these ends, at least implicitly, 
he has taken lawful means to a proper purpose ? 
He has not been fed, but recreated : he has not 
taken nourishment, but medicine, preventive or 
remedial, to a mind diseased. It is no doubt a 
sweet and agreeable medicine : this very agreeable- 
ness makes its medical virtue. It is a sweet anti- 
dote to the bitterness of life. But though a man 
may live by medicine, he does not live for it. So 
no man by rights lives for pleasure. The pleasure 
that a man finds in his work encourages him to 
go on with it. The pleasure that a man finds by 
turning aside to what is not work, picks him up, 
rests and renovates him, that he may go forth as 
from a wayside inn, or diverticulum, refreshed to 



6o 



OF PASSIONS. 



resume the road of labour. Hence we gather the 
solution of the question as to the lawfulness of 
acting for pleasure. If a man does a thing because 
it is pleasant, and takes the pleasure as an incentive 
to carry on his labour, or as a remedy to enable 
him to resume it, he acts for pleasure rightly. For 
this it is not necessary that he should expressly think 
of the pleasure as being helpful to labour : it is 
enough that he accepts the subordination of pleasure 
to work as nature has ordained it ; and this ordi- 
nance he does accept, if he puts forth no positive 
volition the other way, whether expressly, as none 
but a wrong-headed theologian is likely to do, or 
virtually, by taking his pleasure with such greedi- 
ness that the motion of his will is all spent therein 
as in its last end and terminus, so that the pleasure 
ceases to be referable to aught beyond itself, a case 
of much easier occurrence. Or lastly, the natural 
subordination of pleasure to work may be set aside, 
defeated, and rendered impossible by the whole 
tenour of an individual's life, if he be one of those 
giddy butterflies who flit from pleasure to pleasure 
and do no work at all. Till late in the morning he 
sleeps, then breakfasts, then he shoots^ lunches, 
rides, bathes, dines, listens to music, smokes, and 
reads fiction till late at night, then sleeps again ; 
and this, or the like of this is his day, some three 
hundred days at least in the year. This is not 
mere acting for pleasure, it is living for pleasure, 
or acting for pleasure so continuously as to leave 
no scope for any further end of life. It may be 
hard to indicate the precise hour in which this 



OF ANGER. 



6i 



man*s pleasure-seeking passes into sin : still this is 
clear, his life is not innocent. Clear him of gluttony 
and lust, there remains upon him the sin of sloth 
and of a wasted existence. 

7. Even the very highest of delights, the delight 
of contemplation, is not the highest of goods, but 
a concomitant of the highest good. The highest 
good is the final object of the will ; but the object 
of the will is not the will's own act : we do not will 
willing, as neither do we understand understanding, 
not at least without a reflex effort. What we will 
in contemplating is, not to be delighted, but to 
see. This is the subjective end and happiness of 
man, to see, to contemplate. Delight is not any- 
thing objective : neither is it the subjective last end 
of humanity. In no sense then is delight, or 
pleasure, the highest good. 

Readings, — Ar., Eth., X., iv., 8 ; ih.^ X., iii., 8 — 13, 
ih., X., v., 1—5 ; Plato, Gorgias, pp. 494, 495 ; Mill, 
Utilitarianism, 2nd. edit., pp. 11 — 16 ; St. Thos., la 
2ae, q. 31, art. 5 ; id,y Contra Gentiles, iii., 26, nn. 8, 

ID, II, 12. 

Section IV. — Of Anger, 

I. Anger is a compound passion, made up of 
displeasure, desire, and hope : displeasure at a 
slight received, desire of revenge and satisfaction, 
and hope of getting the same, the getting of it being 
a matter of some difficulty and calling for some 
exertion, for we are not angry with one who lies 
wholly in our power, or whom we despise. Anger then 
is conversant at once with the good of vengeance 



62 



OF PASSIONS. 



and with the evil of a slight received : the good 
being somewhat difficult to compass, and the evil 
not altogether easy to wipe out. (Cf. s. i., n. 4, p. 43.) 

2. Anger is defined ; A desire of open vengeance 
for an open sliglit, attended with displeasure at the same, 
the slight being put upon self, or upon some dear one, 
unbefiitingly. The vengeance that the angry man 
craves is a vengeance that all shall see. No, ye 
unnatural hags," cries Lear in his fur}', " I will do 
such things, — what they shall be yet I know not, 
but they shall be the terror of the earth.'' When we 
are angry, we talk of making an example " of the 
offender. The idea is that, as all the world has 
seen us slighted and set at naught, so all the world, 
witnessing the punishment of the offending party, 
may take to heart the lesson vv-hich we are enforcing 
upon him, namely, that we are men of might and 
importance whom none should despise. Whoever 
is angry, is angry at being despised, flouted to his 
face and set at naught, either in his own person, or 
in the person of one whom he venerates and loves, 
or in some cause that lies near to his heart. Anger 
is essentially a craving for vengeance on account of 
a wrong done. If then we have suffered, but think 
we deserve to suffer, we are not angry. If we have 
suffered wrong, but the wrong seems to have been 
done in ignorance, or in the heat of passion, we are 
not angry, or we are not so very angry. " If he 
had known what he was about," we say, or, if he 
had been in his right mind, he could not have 
brought himself to treat me so." But when one 
has done us cool and deliberate wrong, then we are 



OF ANGER. 63 

angry, because the slight is most considerable. 
There is an appearance of our claims to considera- 
tions having been weighed, and found wanting. 
We call it, " a cool piece of impertinence," ** spiteful 
malevolence," and the like. Any other motive to 
which the wrong is traceable on the part of the 
wrong-doer, lessens our anger against him : but the 
motive of contempt, and that alone, if we seem to 
discover it in him, invariably increases it. To this 
all other points are reducible that move our anger, 
as forgetfulness, rudely delivered tidings of mis- 
fortune, a face of mirth looking on at our distress, 
or getting in the way and thwarting our purpose. 

3. Anger differs from hatred. Hatred is a chronic 
affection^ anger an acute one. Hatred wishes evil 
to a man as it is evil, anger as it is just. Anger 
wishes evil to fall on its object in the sight of all 
men, and with the full consciousness of the sufferer : 
hatred is satisfied with even a secret mischief, and, 
so that the evil be a grievous one, does not much 
mind whether the sufferer be conscious of it or no. 
Thus an angry man may wish to see him who has 
offended brought to public confession and shame : 
but a hater is well content to see his enemy spending 
his fortune foolishly, or dead drunk in a ditch on 
a lonely wayside. The man in anger feels grief and 
annoj/ance, not so the hater. At a certain point of 
suffering anger stops, and is appeased when full 
satisfaction seems to have been made : but an 
enemy is implacable and insatiate in his desire of 
your harm. St. Augustine in his Rule to his brethren 
says : " For quarrels, either have them not, or end 



6l 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



them with all speed, lest anger grow to hatred, and 
of a mote make a beam." 

4. Anger, like vengeance, is then only a safe 
course to enter on, when it proceeds not upon 
personal but upon public grounds. And even by 
this maxim many deceive themselves. 

Readings. — Ar., Rhet.f ii., 2 ; ib.y 4, ad fin. ; St. 
Thos., la 282, q. 46, art. 2, in corp. ; ib., q. 46, art. 3, 
in corp. ; ib,, q. 46, art. 6 ; ib,, q. 47, art. 2. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 
Section I. — Of Habit, 

I. A habit is a quality difficult to change y whereby 
an agent whose nature it was to work one way or another 
indeterminately J is disposed easily and readily at will to 
follow this or that particular line of action. Habit 
differs from disposition^ as disposition is a quality 
easily changed. Thus one in a good humour is in 
a disposition to be kind. Habit is a part of character: 
disposition is a passing fit. Again, habit differs 
from faculty, or power: as power enables one to act; 
but habit, presupposing power, renders action easy 
and expeditious, and reliable to come at call. We 
have a power to move our limbs, but a habit to 
walk or ride or swim. Habit then is the deter- 
minant of power. One and the same power works 
well or ill, but not one and the same habit. 



OF HABIT, 



2. A power that has only one way of working, 
set and fixed, is not susceptible of habit. Such 
powers are the forces of inanimate nature, as gravi- 
tation and electricity. A thing does not gravitate 
better for gravitating often. The moon does not 
obey the earth more readily to-day than she did in 
the days of Ptolemy, or of the Chaldean sages. 
Some specious claim to habit might be set up on 
behalf of electricity and magnetism. A glass rod 
rubbed at frequent intervals for six months, is a 
different instrument from what it would have been, 
if left all that time idle in a drawer. Then there 
are such cases as the gradual magnetising of an iron 
bar. Still we cannot speak of electrical habits, or 
magnetic habits, not at least in things without life, 
because there is no will there to control the exercise 
of the quality. As well might we speak of a ** tumble- 
down " habit in a row of houses, brought on by 
locomotives running underneath their foundations. 
It is but a case of an accumulation of small effects, 
inducing gradually a new molecular arrangement, 
so that the old powers act under new material 
conditions. But habit is a thing of life, an appur- 
tenance of will, not of course independent of material 
conditions and structural alterations, in so far forth 
as a living and volitional is also a material agent, 
but essentially usable at will, and brought into play 
and controlled in its operation by free choice. 
Therefore a habit that works almost automatically 
has less of the character of a true habit, and passes 
rather out of morality into the region of physics. 
Again, bad habits, vices to which a man is become 

F 



66 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES 



a slave against his better judgment, are less property 
called habits than virtues are ; for such evil habits 
do not so much attend on volition (albeit volition 
has created them) as drag the will in their wake. 
For the like reason, habit is less properly predicable 
of brute animals than of men : for brutes have no 
intelligent will to govern their habits. The highest 
brutes are most susceptible of habit. They are 
most like men in being most educable. And, of 
human progeny, some take up habits, ia the best 
and completest sense of the term, more readily than 
others. They are better subjects for education : 
education being nothing else than the formation o) 
habits. 

3. Knowledge consists of intellectual habits. 
But the habits of most consequence to the moralist 
lie in the will, and in the sensitive appetite as 
amenable to the control of the will. In this 
category come the virtues, in the ordinary sense 
of that name, and secondarily the vices. 

4. A habit is acquired by acts. Whereupon this 
difficulty has been started :— If the habit, say of 
mental application, comes from acts of study, and 
again the acts from the habit, how ever is the habit 
originally acquired ? We answer that there are two 
ways in which one thing may come from another. 
It may come in point of its very existence, as child 
from parent ; or in point of some mode of existence, 
as scholar from master. A habit has its very 
existence from acts preceding ; but those acts have 
their existence independent of the habit. The acts 
which are elicited after the habit is formed, owe to 



OF HABIT. 



67 



the habit, not their existence, but the mode of their 
existence : that is to say, because of the habit the 
acts are now formed readily, reliably, and artis- 
tically, or virtuously. The primitive acts which 
gradually engendered the habit, were done with 
difficulty, fitfully, and with many failures,— more by 
good luck than good management, if it was a matter 
of skill, and by a special effort rather than as a thing 
of course, where it was question of moral well-doing, 
(See c. ii., s. ii,, n. 9, p. 10,) 

5. A habit is a living thing: it grows and must 
be fed. It grows on acts, and acts are the food 
that sustain it. Unexercised, a habit pines away: 
corruption sets in and disintegration. A man, we 
will say, has a habit of thinking of God during his 
work. He gives over doing so. That means that he 
either takes to thinking of everything and nothing, 
or he takes up some definite hne of thought to the 
exclusion of God. Either way there is a new 
formation to the gradual ruin of the old habit. 

6. Habit and custom may be distinguished in 
philosophical language. We may say that custom 
makes the habit. Custom does not imply any skill 
or special facility. A habit is a channel whereby 
the energies flow, as otherwise they would not have 
flowed, freely and readily in some particular direction, 
A habit, then, is a determination of a faculty for 
good or for evil. It is something intrinsic in a 
man, a real modification of his being, abiding in 
him in the intervals between one occasion for its 
exercise and another : whereas custom is a mere 
denomination, expressive of frequent action and no 



68 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



more. Thus it would be more philosophical to 
speak of a custom of early rising, and of a custom 
of smoking, rather than of a habit of smoking, 
except so far as, by the use of the word hahit, you 
may wish to point to a certain acquired skill of 
the respiratory and facial muscles, and a certain 
acquired temper of the stomach, enabling one to 
inhale tobacco fumes with impunity. 

7. Habits are acquired, but it is obvious that the 
rate of acquisition varies in different persons. This 
comes from one person being more predisposed by 
nature than another to the acquiring of this or that 
habit. By nature, that is by the native temper and 
conformation of his body wherewith he was born, 
this child is more prone to literary learning, that to 
mechanics, this one to obstinacy and contentious- 
ness, that to sensualit}^, and so of the rest. For 
though it is by the soul that a m.an learns, and by 
the act of his will and spiritual powers he becomes 
a glutton or a zealot, nevertheless the bodily organs 
concur and act jointly tov/ards these ends. The 
native dispositions of the child's body for the 
acquisition of habits depend to an unascertained 
extent upon the habits of his ancestors. This is 
the fact of heredity. 

8. Man is said to be " a creature of habits." 
The formation of habits in the will saves the 
necessity of continually making up the mind anew. 
A man will act as he has become habituated, except 
under some special motive from without, or some 
special effort from within. In the case of evil habits, 
that effort is attended with immense difficulty. The 



OF VIRTUES IN GENERAL. 



habit is indeed the man*s own creation, the outcome 
of his free acts. But he is become the bondslave of 
his creature, so much so that when the occasion 
arrives, three-fourths of the act is already done, by 
the force of the habit alone, before his will is 
awakened, or drowsily moves in its sleep. The 
only way for the will to free itself here is not to wait 
for the occasion to come, but be astir betimes, keep 
the occasion at arm's length, and register many a 
determination and firm protest and fervent prayer 
against the habit. He who neglects to do this in 
the interval has himself to blame for being overcome 
every time that he falls upon the occasion which 
brings into play the evil habit. 

Readings, — St. Thos., la 2?e, q. 49, art. 4, ad i, 2 ; 
ib,, q. 50, art. 3, in corp., ad. i, 2 ; ib., q. 51, art. i, 
in corp. ; ib., q. 53, art. 3, in corp. ; Ar., Eth,, II., i. ; 
ib.f III., v., 10 — 14; zd., II., iv., I, 2, 4. 

Section II, — Of Viytues in General, 

I. Virtue in its most transcendental sense means 
the excellence of a thing according to its kind. 
Thus it is the virtue of the eye to see, and of a 
horse to be fleet of foot. Vice is a flaw in the make 
of a thing, going to render it useless for the purpose 
to vv^hich it was ordained. From the ethical stand- 
point, virtue is a habit that a man has got of doing 
moral good, or doing that which it befits his rational 
nature to do : and vice is a habit of doing moral 
evil. (See c. i., n. 5.) It is important to observe that 
virtue and vice are not acts but habits. Vices do 
not make a man guilty, nor do virtues make him 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



innocent. A man is guilty or innocent according to 
his acts, not according to his habits. A man may 
do a wicked thing and not be vicious, or a good 
action and not be virtuous. But no man is vicious 
who has not done one, two, aye, many wicked 
things : and to be virtuous, a man must have 
performed many acts of virtue. Children do right 
and wrong, but they have neither virtues nor vices 
except in a nascent state : there has not yet been 
time in them for the habits to be formed. When 
sin is taken away by God and pardoned, the vice, 
that is, the evil habit, if any such existed before, still 
remains, and constitutes a danger for the future. 
The habit can only be overcome by watchfulness 
and a long continuance of contrary acts. But vice 
is not sin, nor is sin vice, nor a good deed a virtue. 

2. The name of virtue is given to certain habits 
residing in the intellect, as mtuition or insight (into 
self-evident truths), wisdom (regarding conclusions 
of main application), scie?ice (of conclusions in specia] 
departments), and art. These are called ijttelledital 
virtues. 

It was a pecuharity of Socrates' teaching, largely 
shared by Plato, to make all virtue intellectual, a 
doctrine expressed in the formula. Virtue is know- 
ledge; which is tantamount to this other. Vice is 
ignorance, or an erroneous view. From whence the 
conclusion is inevitable : No evil deed is wilfully do7ie ; 
and therefore. No man is to blame for being wicked. 

3. Undoubtedly there is a certain element of 
ignorance in all vice, and a certain absence of 
will about every vicious act. There is likewise an 



OF VIRTUES IN GENERAL, 



intellectual side to all virtue. These positions we 
willingly concede to the Socratics. Every morally 
evil act is borne of some voluntary inconsiderateness. 
The agent is looking the wrong way in the instant 
at which he does wrong. Either he is regarding 
only the solicitations of his inferior nature to the 
neglect of the superior, or he is considering some 
rational good indeed, but a rational good which, if 
he would look steadily upon it, he would perceive 
to be unbefitting for him to choose. No man can 
do evil in the very instant in which his under- 
standing is considering, above all things else, that 
which it behoves him specially to consider in the 
case. Again, in every wrong act, it is not the sheer 
evil that is willed, but the good through or with the 
evil. Good, real or supposed, is sought for : evil is 
accepted as leading to good in the way of means, or 
annexed thereto as a circumstance. Moreover, no 
act is virtuous that is elicited quite mechanically, or 
at the blind instance of passion. To be virtuous, 
the thing must be done on principle, that is, at the 
dictate of reason and by the light of intellect. 
V 4. Still, virtue is not knowledge. There are 
other than intellectual habits needed to complete 
the character of a virtuous man. " I see the better 
course and approve it, and follow the worse," said 
the Roman poet.* The evil which I will not, that 
I do," said the Apostle. It is not enough to have 
an intellectual discernment of and preference for 

* Video raeliora proboque, 
Deteriora sequor. 

(Ovid, Metamorph,, vii., 21.) 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES, 



what is right : but the will must be habituated to 
embrace it, and the passions too must be habituated 
to submit and square themselves to right being done. 
In other words, a virtuous man is made up by the 
union of enlightened intellect with the moral virtues. 
The addition is necessary for several reasons. 

{a) Ordinarily, the intellect does not necessitate 
the will. The will, then, needs to be clamped and 
set by habit to choose the right thing as the intellect 
proposes it. 

(b.) Intellect, or Reason, is not absolute in the 
human constitution. As Aristotle (Pol., I., v., 6) 
says : " The soul rules the body with a despotic 
command : but reason rules appetite with a com- 
mand constitutional and kingly " : that is to say, as 
Aristotle elsewhere (Eth., I., xiii., 15, 16) explains, 
passion often "fights and resists reason, opposes 
and contradicts " : it has therefore to be bound by 
ordinances and institutions to follow reason's lead : 
these institutions are good habits, moral virtues, 
resident there where passion itself is resident, in the 
inferior appetite. It is not enough that the rider is 
competent, but the horse too must be broken in. 

(c.) It is a saying, that " no mortal is always 
wise." There are times when reason's utterance is 
faint from weariness and vexation. Then, unless 
a man has acquired an almost mechanical habit 
of obeying reason in the conduct of his will and 
passions, he will in such a conjuncture act incon- 
siderately and do wrong. That habit is moral 
virtue. Moral virtue is as the fly-wheel of an 
engine, a reservoir of force to carry the machine 



VIRTUES INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL. 73 



past the " dead points " in its working. Or again, 
moral virtue is as discipline to troops suddenly 
attacked, or hard pressed in the fight. 

5. Therefore, besides the habits in the intellect 
that bear the name of intellectual virtues^ the virtuous 
man must possess other habits, as well in the will, 
that this power may readily embrace what the 
understanding points out to be good, as in the 
sensitive appetite in both its parts, concupiscible 
and irascible, so far forth as appetite is amenable 
to the control of the will, that it may be so con- 
trolled and promptly obey the better guidance. 
These habits in the will and in the sensitive appetite 
are called moral virtues, and to them the name of 
virtue is usually confined. 

Readings. — St. Thos., la 23e, q. 71, art. i, in corp.; 
ih,, q. 58, art. 2; ih,y q. 58, art. 3, in corp., ad 3; ib,, 
q. 56, art. 4, in corp., ad i — 3. 

Section III, — Of the Difference between Virtues Intellectual 
and Moral. 

I. St. Thomas* (la 28e, q. 56, art. 3, in corp.) 
draws this difference, that an intellectual virtue 
gives one a facility in doing a good act ; but a 
moral virtue not only gives facility, but makes one 
put the facility in use. Thus a habit of grammar 

• By doing good St. Thomas means the determination of the 
appetite, rational or sensitive, to good. He says that intellectual 
virtue does not prompt this determination of the appetite. Of 
course it does not : it prompts only the act of the power wherein it 
resides : now it resides in the intellect, not in the appetite ; and it 
prompts the act of the intellect, which however is not always 
followed by an act of appetite in accordance with it. 



74 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



he says, enables one readily to speak correctly, but 
does not ensure that one always shall speak cor- 
rectly, for a grammarian may make solecisms on 
purpose : whereas a habit of justice not only makes 
a man prompt and ready to do just deeds, but 
makes him actually do them. Not that any habit 
necessitates volition. Habits do not necessitate, 
but they facilitate the act of the will. (s. i., nn. i, 
2, 8, pp. 64, 68.) 

2. Another distinction may be gathered from 
St. Thomas (la 23e, q. 21, art, 2, ad 2), that the special 
intellectual habit called art disposes a man to act 
correctly towards some particular end, but a moral 
habit towards the common end, scope and purpose 
of all human life. Thus medical skill ministers to 
the particular end of healing : while the moral habit 
of temperance serves the general end, which is final 
happiness and perfection. So to give a wrong 
prescription through sheer antecedent ignorance, is 
to fail as a doctor : but to get drunk wittingly and 
knowingly is to fail as a man. 

3. The grand distinction between intellectual 
and moral habits seems to be this, that moral habits 
reside in powers which may act against the dictate 
of the understanding, — the error of Socrates, noticed 
above (c. v., s. ii., n. 2, p. 70), lay in supposing that 
they could not so act : whereas the power which is 
the seat of the intellectual habits, the understanding, 
cannot possibty act against itself. Habits dispose 
the subject to elicit acts of the power wherein they 
reside. Moral habits induce acts of will and sen- 
sitive appetite : intellectual habits, acts of intellect. 



VIRTUES IMLELLECTUAL AND MORAL. 75 



Will and appetite may act against what the agent 
knows to be best : but intellect cannot contradict 
intellect. It cannot judge that to be true and 
beautiful which it knov/s to be false and foul. 
If a musician strikes discords on purpose, or a gram- 
marian makes solecisms wilfully, he is not therein 
contradicting the intellectual habit within him, for 
it is the office of such a habit to aid the intellect to 
judge correctly, and the intellect here does correctly 
judge the effect produced. On the other hand, if 
the musician or grammarian blunders, the intellect 
within him has not been contradicted, seeing that 
he knew no better : the habit of grammar or music 
has not been violated, but has failed to cover the 
case. Therefore the intellectual habit is not a safe- 
guard to keep a man from going against his in- 
telligent self. No such safeguard is needed : the 
thing is impossible, in the region of pure intellect. 
In a region where no temptation could enter, in- 
tellectual habits v/ould suffice alone of themselves to 
make a perfectly virtuous man. To avoid evil and 
choose good, it would be enough to know the one 
and the other. But in this world seductive reason- 
ings sway the will, and fits of passion the sensitive 
appetite, prompting the one and the other to rise up 
and break away from what the intellect knows all 
along to be the true good of man. Unless moral 
virtue be there to hold these powers to their 
allegiance, they will frequently disobey the under- 
standing. Such disobedience is more irrational 
than any mere intellectual error. In an error 
purely intellectual, where the will has no part, the 



76 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



objective truth indeed is missed, but the intelligence 
that dwells within the man is not flouted and gain- 
sayed. It takes two to make a contradiction as to 
make a quarrel. But an intellectual error has only 
one side. The intellect utters some false pronounce- 
ment, and there is nothing within the man that says 
otherwise. In the moral error there is a contra- 
diction within, an intestine quarrel. The intellect 
pronounces a thing not good, not to be taken, and 
the sensitive appetite will throw a veil over the face 
of intellect, and seize upon the thing. That amounts 
to a contradiction of a man's own intelligent self. 

4. It appears that, absolutely speaking, intel- 
lectual virtue is the greater perfection of a man : 
indeed in the act of that virtue, as we have seen, his 
crowning perfection and happiness lies. But moral 
virtue is the greater safeguard. The breach of 
moral virtue is the direr evil. Sin is worse than 
ignorance, and more against reason, because it is 
against the doer's own reason. Moral virtue then 
is more necessary than intellectual in a world where 
evil is rife, as it is a more vital thing to escape 
grievous disease than to attain the highest develop- 
ment of strength and beauty. And as disease spoils 
strength and beauty, not indeed always taking them 
away, but rendering them valueless, so evil moral 
habits subvert intellectual virtue, and turn it aside 
in a wrong direction. The vicious will keeps the 
intellect from contemplating the objects which are 
the best good of man : so the contemplation is 
thrown away on inferior things, often on base 
things, and an overgrowth of folly ensues on those 



OF THE MEAN IN MORAL VIRTUE. 



points whereupon it most imports a man to be 
wise. 

To sum up all in a sentence, not exclusive but 
dealing with characteristics : the moral virtues are the 
virtues for this world, intellectual virtue is the virtue oj 
the life to come. 

Readings. — St. Thos., la 2se, q. 58, art. 2, in 
corp. ; Ar., Eth., I., xiii., 15 — ig ; St. Thos., la sse, 
q. 66, art. 3. 

j Section IV. — Of the Mean in Moral Virtue. 

I. Moral virtue is a habit of doing the right thing 
in the conduct of the will and the government of 
the passions. Doing right is opposed to overdoing 
the thing, and to underdoing it. Doing right is 
taking what it suits a rational nature to desire, and 
eschewing what is unsuitable under the circum- 
stances, (c. i., n. 5.) 

But a thing may be unsuitable in two ways, by 
excess, and by defect : the rational choice is in the 
mean between these two. The moral order here is 
illustrated from the physical. Too much exercise 
and too little alike impair the strength ; so of meat 
and drink in regard to health ; but diet and exercise 
in moderation, and in proportion to the subject, 
create, increase, and preserve both health and 
strength. So it is with temperance, and fortitude, 
and all varieties of moral virtue. He who fights 
shy of everything, and never stands his ground, 
becomes a coward ; while he who never fears at all, 
but walks boldly up to all danger, turns out rash. 
The enjoyer of every pleasure, who knows not what 



78 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



it is to deny himself aught, is a libertine and loose 
liver ; while to throw over all the graces and deli- 
cious things of life, not as St. Paul did, who counted 
all things dross, that he might gain Christ, but 
absolutely, as though such things were of themselves 
devoid of attraction, is boorishness and insensibility. 
Thus the virtues of temperance and fortitude perish 
in excess and defect, and live in the mean. It is to 
be noticed in this illustration that the mean of 
health is not necessarily the mean of virtue. 
What is too little food, and too much exercise, for 
the animal well-being of a man, may be the right 
amount of both for him in some higher relation, 
inasmuch as he is more than a mere animal ; as for 
a soldier in a hard campaign, where a sufficiency of 
food and rest is incompatible with his serving his 
country's need. 

2. The taking of means to an end implies the 
taking them in moderation, not in excess, or we 
shall overshoot the mark, nor again so feebly and 
inadequately as to fall short of it. No mere instru- 
ment admits of an unlimited use ; but the end to be 
gained fixes limits to the use of the instrument, thus 
far, no more, and no less. Wherever then reason 
requires an end to be gained, it requires a use of 
means proportionate to the end, not coming short 
of it, nor going so far beyond as to defeat the 
purpose in view. The variety of good that is called 
the Useful lies within definite limits, between two 
wildernesses, so to speak, stretching out undefined 
into the distance, wilderness of Excess on the one 
side, and wilderness of Defect on the other. 



OF THE MEAN IN MORAL VIRTUE. 



79 



3. A true work of art cannot be added to or 
taken from without spoiling it. A perfect church 
would be spoiled by a lengthening of the chancel or 
raising the tower, albeit there are buildings, secular 
and ecclesiastical, that might be drawn out two 
miles long and not look any worse. The colouring 
of a picture must not be too violent and positive ; 
but artistic colouring must be chaste, and artistic 
utterance gentle, and artistic action calm and indi- 
cative of self-command. Not that voice and action 
should not be impassioned for a great emergency, 
but the very passion should bear the mark of con- 
trol : in the great master's phrase, you must not 

tear a passion to tatters." It is by moderation 
sitting upon power that works of art truly masculine 
and mighty are produced ; and by this sign they are 
marked off from the lower host of things, gorgeous 
and redundant, and still more from the order of 
"the loose, the lawless, the exaggerated, the inso- 
lent, and the profane." 

4. On these considerations Aristotle framed his 
celebrated definition of moral virtue : the habit of 
fixing the choice the golden mean in relation to our- 
selves, defined by reason, as a prudent man would define 
it. All virtue is a habit, as we have seen — a habit 
of doing that which is the proper act of the power 
wherein the habit resides. One class of moral 
virtues is resident in the will, the act of which power 
is properly called choice. The rest of the moral 
virtues reside in the sensitive appetite, which also 
may be said to choose that object on which it fastens. 
Thus moral virtue is a habit of fixing the choice. The 



So 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



golden mean between two extremes of excess and 
defect respectively has been already explained, and 
may be further shown by a review of the virtues. 
Besides fortitude and temperance, already described, 
liberality is a mean between prodigality and stingi- 
ness ; magnificence between vulgar display and petti- 
ness : magnanimity between vainglory and pusillan- 
imity ; truthfulness between exaggeration and dis- 
simulation ; friendship between complaisance, or 
flattery, and frowardness, — and so of the rest. The 
golden mean must be taken in relation to ourselves, 
because in many matters of behaviour and the 
management of the passions the right amount for 
one person would be excessive for another, according 
to varieties of age, sex, station, and disposition. 
Thus anger that might become a layman might be 
unbefitting in a churchman ; and a man might be 
thought loquacious if he talked as much as a dis- 
creet matron.* The golden mean, then, must be 
defined by reason according to the particular circum- 
stances of each case. But as Reason herself is to 
Jjeek where she is not guided by Prudence, the mean 
of virtue must be defined, not by the reason of the 
buffoon Pantolabus, or of Nomentanus the spend- 
thrift, but as a prudent man would define it, given an 
insight into the case. 

5. The golden mean," as Horace named it 
{Od., ii., 10), obtains principally, if not solely, in 
living things, and in what appertains to living things, 
and in objects of art. A lake, as such, has no natural 

• Ar., Pol., III., iv., 17, says just the converse, which marks the 
altered position of woman in modern society. 



OF THE MEAN IN MORAL VIRTUE. 



dimensions : it may be ten miles long, it may be a 
hundred ; but an elephant or an oak-tree cannot go 
beyond a certain growth. There is a vast range 
between the temperature of a blast-furnace and the 
temperature of the ice-pack on the Polar Sea, but 
very limited is the range possible in the blood of a 
hvmg man. Viewed artistically, a hill may be too 
low, or a lake want width, for man's eye to rest 
upon It with perfect satisfaction. The golden mean, 
then, is an artistic conception, and what I may call 
an anthropological conception : it suits man, and is 
required by man, though Nature may spurn and 
over-ride it. The earthquake, the hurricane, and 
the angry ocean are not in the golden mean, not at 
least from a human point of view. If man chooses 
to personify and body forth the powers of nature 
he creates some monstrous uncouth figure, like the 
Assyrian and Egyptian idols ; but if man makes a 
study of man, and brings genius and patient elabora- 
tion to bear on his work, there emerges the symmetry 
and perfect proportion of the Greek statue. No 
people ever made so much of the beauty of the 
human form as the ancient Greeks : they made it 
the object of a passion that marked their religion 
their institutions, their literature, and their art' 
rheir virtues and their vices turned upon it. Hence 
the golden mean is eminently a Greek conception, 
a leadmg idea of the Hellenic race. The Greek 
hated a thmg overdone, a gaudy ornament, a proud 
title a fulsome compliment, a high-flown speech, a 
wordy peroration. Nothing too much was the in- 
scription over the lintel of the national sanctiiar;y 



9a 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



at Delphi. It is the surpassing grace of Greek art 
of the best period, that in it there shines out the 
highest power, with noflmig too much of straining after 
effect. The study of Greek hterary models operates 
as a corrective to redundancy, and to what ill- 
conditioned minds take to be fine writing. The 
Greek artist knew just how far to go, and when to 
stop. That point he called, in his own unsurpassed 
tongue, the Kuipo^, " The right measure (Kaipo^i) is 
at the head of all," says Pindar. Booby, not to 
have understood by how much the half is more than 
the whole," is the quaint cry of Hesiod. iEschylus 
puts these verses in the mouth of his Furies : 

The golden mean is God's delight ; 
Extremes are hateful in His sight. 
Hold by the mean, and glorify 
Nor anai chy nor slaver>\ 

Characteristic of Socrates was his ironyy or way 
of understating himself, in protest against the extra- 
vagant professions of the Sophists. In the reckoning 
of the Pythagoreans, the Infinite, the Unhmited, or 
Unchecked, was marked as evil, in opposition to 
good, which was the Limited. From thence, Plato, 
taking up his parable, writes : ** The goddess of the 
Limit, my fair Philebus, seeing insolence and all 
manner of wickedness breaking loose from all limit 
in point of gratification and gluttonous greed, estab- 
lished a law and order of limited being ; and you 
say this restraint was the death of pleasure; I say 
it was the saving of it." Going upon the tradition 
of his countrymen, upon their art and philosophy, 
their poetry, eloquence, politics, and inmost senti- 



OF THE MEAN IN MORAL VIRTUE. 



83 



menl, Aristotle formulated the law of moral virtue, 
to hold by the golden mean, as discerned by the 
prudent in view of the present circumstances, be- 
tween the two extremes of excess and defect. 

6. There is only one object on which man may 
throw himself without reserve, his last end, the 
adequate object of his happiness, God. God is 
approached by faith, hope, and charity; but it 
belongs not to philosophy to speak* of these super- 
natural virtues. There remains to the philosopher 
the ^ natural virtue of religion, which is a part of 
justice. Religion has to do with the inward act of 
veneration and with its outward expression. To 
the latter the rule of the mean at once applies. 
Moderation in religion is necessary, so far as ex- 
ternals are concerned. Not that any outward 
assiduity, pomp, splendour, or costliness, can be 
too much in itself, or anything like enough, to 
worship God with, but it may be too much for our 
limited means, which in this world are drawn on by 
other calls. But our inward veneration for God 
and desire to do Him honour, can never be too 
intense : Blessing the Lord, exalt Him as much as 
you can : for He is above all praise." * 

7. The rule of the mean, then, is a human rule, 
for dealing with men, and with human goods con- 
sidered as means. It is a Greek rule: for the 
Greeks were of all nations the fondest admirers of 
man and the things of man. But when we ascend 
to God, we are out among the immensities and 
eternities. The vastness of creation, the infinity 

• Ecclus. xliii. 33. 



S4 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES, 



of the Creator,- — there is no mode or measure there. 
In those heights the Hebrew Psalmist loved to soar. 
Christianity, with its central dogma of the Incarna- 
tion, is the meeting of Hebrew and Greek. That 
mystery clothes the Lord God of hosts with the 
measured beauty, grace, and truth, that man can 
enter into. But enough of this. Enough to show 
that the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean is a highly 
suggestive and wide-reaching doctrine beyond the 
sphere of Morals. It throws out one great branch 
into Art, another into Theology. 

8. The vicious extremes, on this side and on 
that of a virtue, are not always conterminous with 
the virtue itself, but sometimes another and more 
excellent virtue intervenes ; as in giving we may 
pass from justice to hberality, and only through 
passing the bounds of liberality, do we arrive at the 
vicious extreme of prodigality. So penitential fasting 
intervenes between temperance in food and undue 
neglect of sustenance. But it is to be noted that 
the central virtue, so to speak, as justice, sobriety, 
chastity, is for all persons on all occasions : the 
more excellent side-virtue, as liberality, or total 
abstinence, is for special occasions and special 
classes of persons. 

Readings, — Ar., FAh., II., ii., 6, 7; ib,, II., cc. 6 — 9; 
Hor., OdeSf II., 10; Ruskin, Modern Painters, p. 3, s. i., 
c. X. 

Section V. — Of Cardinal Virtues. 

I. The enumeration of cardinal virtues is a piece 
of Greek philosophy that has found its ways into the 



CF CARDINAL VIRTUES, 



85 



catechism. Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temper- 
ance are mentioned by Plato as recognised heads of 
virtue. They are recognised, though less clearly, by 
Xenophon, reporting the conversations of Socrates. 
It does not look as though Socrates invented the 
division : he seems to have received it from an 
earlier source, possibly Pythagoras. They are men- 
tioned in Holy Scripture (Wisdom viii., 7, which is 
however a Greek book), and Proverbs viii., 14. They 
make no figure in the philosophies of India and 
China. 

2. The cardinal virtues are thus made out.-— 
Virtue is a habit that gives a man readiness in 
behaving according to the reason that is in him. 
Such a habit may be fourfold, (a) It may reside 
in the reason, or intellect itself, enabling it readily 
to discern the reasonable thing to do, according to 
particular circumstances as they occur. That habit 
is the virtue of prudence, (b) It may reside in the 
rational appetite, otherwise called the will, disposing 
a man to act fairly and reasonably in his dealings 
with other men. That is justice, (c) It may reside 
in the irrational, or sensitive, appetite, and that to 
a twofold purpose ; (a) to restrain the said appe- 
tite in its concupiscible part from a wanton and 
immoderate eagerness after pleasure ; that is tem- 
perance : {^) to incite the said appetite in its 
irascible part not to shrink from danger, where 
there is reason for going on in spite of danger ; that 
is fortitude. 

3. Plato compares the rational soul in man to 
a charioteer, driving two horses : one horse repre- 



86 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



senting the concupiscible, the other the irascible 
part of the sensitive appetite. He draws a vivid 
picture of the resistance of the concupiscible part 
against reason, how madly it rushes after lawless 
pleasure, and how it is only kept in restraint by 
main force again and again applied, till gradually 
it grows submissive. This submissiveness, gradually 
acquired, is the virtue of temperance. Clearly the 
habit dwells in the appetite, not in reason : in the 
horse, not in the charioteer. It is that habitual 
state, which in a horse we call being broken in. 

The concupiscible appetite is broken in to reason 
by temperance residing within it. Plato lavishes all 
evil names on the steed that represents the con- 
cupiscible part. But the irascible part, the other 
steed, has its own fault, and that fault twofold, 
sometimes of over-venturesomeness, sometimes of 
shying and turning tail. The habit engendered, in 
the irascible part, of being neither over-venturesome 
nor over-timorous, but going by reason, is termed 
fortitude.* 

4. As the will is the rational appetite, the proper 
object of which is rational good, it does not need to 
be prompted by any habit to embrace rational good 
in what concerns only the inward administration 
of the agent's own self. There is no difficulty in 
that department, provided the sensitive appetite be 
kept in hand by fortitude and temperance. But 

* It will help an Englishman to understand Plato's comparison, 
If instead of concupiscible part and irascible part, we call the one steed 
Passion and the other Pluck. Pluck fails, and Passion runs to 
gxcess, till Pluck is formed to fortitude, and Passion to temperance. 



OF PRUDENCE. 



8? 



where there is question of external relations with 
other men, it is not enough that the sensitive 
appetite be regulated, but a third virtue is necessary, 
the habit of justice, to be planted in the will, which 
would otherwise be too v^eak to attend steadily to 
points, not of the agent's own good merely, but of 
the good of other men. 

5. Thus we have the four cardinal virtues : 
prudence, a habit of the intellect ; temperance, 
a habit of the concupiscible appetite ; fortitude, a 
habit of the irascible appetite ; and justice, a habit 
of the will. Temperance and Fortitude in the 
Home Department ; Justice for Foreign Affairs ; 
with Prudence for Premier. Or, to use another 
comparison, borrov^^ed from Plato, prudence is the 
health of the soul, temperance its beauty, fortitude 
its strength, and justice its wealth. 

Readings, — St. Thos., la 23e, q. 61, art. 2, in 
corp. ; ib., q. 56, art. 4, in corp., ad i — 3 ; ib., q. 56, 
art. 6, in corp., ad i, 3 ; ib,, q. 59, art. 4, in corp., 
ad 2 ; Plato, Laivs, 631 b, c. 

Section VI.— Of Prudence, 

I. Prudence is right reason applied to practice, or 
more fully it may be defined, the habit of intellectual 
discernm.ent that enables one to hit upon the golden 
mean of moral virtue and the way to secure that 
mean. Thus prudence tells one what amount of 
punishment is proper for a particular delinquent, 
and how to secure his getting it. It is to be ob- 
served that prudence does not will the golden mean 
in question, but simply indicates it. To will and 



88 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



desire the mean is the v/ork of the moral virtue 
concerned therewith : as in the case given it is the 
work of vindictive justice. 

2. From the definition of moral virtue above 
given (c. v., s. iv., n. 4, p. 79), it is clear that no 
moral virtue can come into act without prudence : 
for it is the judgment of the prudent man that must 
define in each case the golden mean in relation to 
ourselves, which every moral virtue aims at. Thus, 
without prudence, fortitude passes into rashness, 
vindictive justice into harshness, clemency into 
weakness, religion into superstition. 

3. But may not one with no prudence to guide 
him hit upon the golden mean by some happy 
impulse, and thus do an act of virtue ? We answer, 
he may do a good act, and if you will, a virtuous act, 
but not an act of virtue, not an act proceeding from 
a pre-existent habit in the doer. The act is like a 
good stroke made by chance, not by skill ; and like 
such a stroke, it cannot be readily repeated at the 
agent's pleasure. (See c. v., s. i., n. 4, p. 66 ; and 
Ar., Eth,y II., iv., 2.) 

4. Prudence in its essence is an intellectual virtue, 
being a habit resident in the understanding : but it 
deals with the subject-matter of the moral virtues, 
pointing out the measure of temperance, the bounds 
of fortitude, or the path of justice. It is the habit 
of intellectual discernment that must enlighten every 
qioral virtue in its action. There is no virtue that 
goes blundering and stumbling in the dark. 

5. He is a prudent man, that can give counsel to 
others and to himself in order to the attainment of 



OF PRUDENCE. 



gg 



ends that are worthy of human endeavour. If 
unworthy ends are intended, however sagaciously 
they are pursued, that is not prudence. We may 
call it sagacity, or shrewdness, being a habit of ready 
discernment and application of means to ends. 
Napoleon I. was conspicuous for this sagacity. It 
is the key to success in this world. But prudence 
discovers worthy ends only, and to them only does 
it provide means. The intellect is often blinded by 
passion, by desire and by fear, so as not to discern 
the proper end and term to make for in a particular 
instance and a practical case. The general rules of 
conduct remain in the mind, as that, In anger be 
mindful of mercy : " but the propriety of mercy 
under the present provocation drops out of sight. 
The intellect does not discern the golden mean of 
justice and mercy in relation to the circumstances 
in which the agent now finds himself. In other 
words, the habit of prudence has failed ; and it has 
failed because of the excess of passion. Thus pru- 
dence is dependent on the presence of the virtues 
that restrain passion, namely, fortitude and temper- 
ance. A like argument would hold for the virtue 
of justice, that rectifies inordinate action in dealing 
with another. The conclusion is, that as the moral 
virtues cannot exist without prudence, so neither 
can prudence exist without them : for vice corrupts 
the judgment of prudence. 

6. Hence we arrive at a settlement of the question, 
whether the virtues can be separated, or whether to 
possess one is to possess all. We must distinguish 
between the rudimentary forms of virtue and the 



go 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



perfect habit. The rudimentary forms certainly can 
exist separate : they are a matter of temperament 
and inherited constitution : and the man whom 
nature has kindly predisposed to benevolence, she 
has perhaps very imperfectly prepared for prudence, 
fortitude, or sobriety. But one perfect habit of any 
one of the four cardinal virtues, acquired by repeated 
acts, and available at the call of reason, involves the 
presence, in a matured state, of the other three 
habits also. A man who acts irrationally upon one 
ground, will behave irrationally on other grounds 
also : or if his conduct be rational there, it will not 
be from regard for reason, but from impulse, tem- 
perament, or from some other motive than the 
proper motive of the virtue which he seems to be 
exercising. 

Readings,— -St. l^hos., la 28e, q. 54, art. 4; ih., q. 58, 
art. 5, in corp. ; ih., 2a 23e, q. 47, art. 7, 12, 13 ; 
x\r., Eth., VI., v. ; ib., VI., xii., 9, 10; ih., VI., xiii., 6; 
St. Francis of Sales, Of the Love of God, bk. xi., 
c. vii. 

Section VII.— 0/ Temperance, 
I. Temperance is a virtue which regulates by the 
judgment of reason those desires and dehghts which 
attend upon the operations whereby human nature 
is preserved in the individual and propagated in the 
species. Temperance is the virtue contrary to the 
two deadly sins of Gluttony and Lust. As against 
the former, it represents Abstinence, or moderation 
in solid food, and Sobriety, which is moderation in 
drink. As against the latter, it is the great virtue of 



OF lEMPERANCB. 



91 



Chastity. The student must bear in mind that, to 
a philosopher, Temperance does not mean Total 
Abstinence, and Abstinence is quite independent of 
Fridays and flesh-meat. Temperance then is made 
up of Abstinence, Sobriety, and Chastity. 

Aristotle writes : Cases of falling short in 
the taking of pleasure, and of people enjoying 
themselves less than they ought, are not apt to 
occur : for such insensibility is not human : but if 
there be any one to whom nothing is pleasant, and 
all comes alike in the matter of taste, he must be far 
from the state and condition of humanity : such a 
being has no name, because he is nowhere met 
with." This is true, because where there is question 
of a virtue, such as Temperance, resident in the 
concupiscible appetite, we are not concerned with 
any sullenness or moroseness of will, nor with any 
scrupulosity or imbecility of judgment, refusing to 
gratify the reasonable cravings of appetite, but with 
the habitual leaning and lie of the appetite itself. 
Now the concupiscible appetite in every man, of its 
own nature, leans to its proper object of delectable 
good. No virtue is requisite to secure it from 
too little inclination that way: but to restrain the 
appetite from going out excessively to delight is the 
function, and the sole function, of Temperance. 
The measure of restraint is relative, as the golden 
mean is relative, and varies with different persons 
and in view of different ends. The training of the 
athlete is not the training of the saint. 

3. Besides the primary virtue of Temperance, and 
its subordinate species (enumerated above, n. i), 



92 OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 

certain other virtues are brought under Temperance 
in a secondary sense, as observing in easier matters 
that moderation and seh'-restraint which the primary 
virtue keeps in the matter that is most difficult of 
alL St. Thomas calls these potential parts of Tem- 
perance. There is question here of v/hat is most 
difficult to man as an animal, not of what is most 
difficult to him as a rational being. To rational man, 
as such, ambition is harder to restrain than sensu- 
ality: which is proved by the fact that fewer men, who 
have any ambition in them, do restrain that passion 
than those who restrain the animal propensities that 
are common to all. But to man as an animal (and 
vast numbers of the human race rise little above the 
animal state), it is hardest of all things to restrain 
those appetites that go with the maintenance and 
propagation of flesh and blood. These then are 
the proper matter of Temperance : other virtues, 
potential parts of Temperance, restrain other 
cravings which are less animal. Of these virtues 
the most noticeable are humility, meekness, and 
modesty.* 

4. There is a thirst after honour and pre- 
eminence, arising from self-esteem, and prevalent 
especially where there is little thought of God, and 
scant reverence for the present majesty of heaven. 
A man who thinks little of his Maker is great in his 
own eyes, as our green English hills are mountains 
to one who has not seen the Alpine heights and 

* This is St. Thomas's arrangement, placing Humility under 
Temperance. The connection of Humility with Magnanimity, and 
thereby with Fortitude, is indicated pp. 100, loi. 



OF TEMPERANCE. 



93 



snows. Apart from the consideration of God there 
is no humility ; and this is why Aristotle, who treats 
of virtues as they minister to the dealings of man 
with man, makes no mention of this virtue. There 
are certain outward manifestations in words, acts, 
and gestures, the demeanour of a humble man, 
which is largely identified with modesty and with 
submission to others as representing God. 

5. Modesty is that outward comportment, style 
of dress, conversation, and carriage, which indi- 
cates the presence of Temperance, **set up on 
holy pedestal" (Plato, PhcBdr., 254 b) in the heart 
within. 

6. Meekness is moderation in anger, and is or 
should be the virtue of all men. Clemency is 
moderation in punishment, and is the virtue of men 
in office, who bear the sword or the rod. 

7. As regards the vices opposite to Temperance, 
an important distinction is to be drawn between 
him who sins by outburst of passion and him whose 
very principles are corrupt.* The former in doing 
evil acknowledges it to be evil, and is prone to repent 
of it afterwards : the latter has lost his belief in 
virtue, and his admiration for it : he drinks in iniquity 
like water, with no after-qualms ; he glories in his 
shame. The former is reclaimable, the latter is 
reprobate ; his intellect as well as his heart is 
vitiated and gone bad. If there were no miracles, 
he would be a lost man : but God can work miracles 
in the moral as in the physical order : in that there 
is hope for him. 

* See the note in Aquinas Ethicus, Vol. I., pp. 170. £71. 



94 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



8. A nation need not be virtuous in the great 
bulk of her citizens, to be great in war and in 
dominion, in laws, in arts, and in literature : but the 
bulk of the people must possess at least the sense 
and appreciation of virtue in order to such national 
greatness. When that sense is lost, the nation 
is undone and become impotent, for art no less 
than for empire. Thus the Greece of Pericles and 
of Phidias fell, to be living Greece no more." 

9. As in other moral matters, no hard and fast 
line of division exists between sinning from passion 
and sinning on principle, but cases of the one 
shade into cases of the others, and by frequent 
indulgence of passion principle is brought gradually 
to decay. 

Readings. — Ar. , Eth., III., x. ; St.Thos., 2a 2ae, 
q. 141, art. 2; ib., q. 141, art. 3, in corp.; ib., q. 142, 
art. i; ib., q. 143, art. i, in corp., ad 2, 3; ib., q. 161, 
art. I, ad 5 ; ib., q. 161, art. 2, in corp. ; ib., q. 161, art. 
6, in corp., ad i ; ib., q. 157, art. i, in corp., ad 3 ; 
ib.f q. 156, art. 3 ; Ar., Eth., VII., viii. 

Section VIII. — Of Fortitude. 

I. As Temperance is a carb, restraining animal 
nature in the pursuit of the good to which it goes out 
most eagerly, namely, life and the means of its con- 
tinuance, so Fortitude also is a curb, withholding that 
nature from irrational flight from the evil which it 
most dreads. Aristotle tells us what that evil is : Most 
dreadful oFall things is death, for it is the limit, and 
for the dead man there appears to be no further good 
nor evil left." (Eth., Ill , vi,, b., Death is truly the 



OF FORTITUDE. 



95 



limit to human existence : for, though the soul be 
immortal, the being of flesh and blood, that we call 
man, is dissolved in death, and, apart from super- 
natural hope of the resurrection, extinct for ever. 
Death therefore is the direst of all evils in the animal 
economy; and as such, is supremely abhorred by 
the sensitive appetite, which is the animal part of 
man. Fortitude moderates this abhorrence and fear 
by the dictate of reason. Reason shows that there 
are better things than life, and things worse than 
death, for man in his spiritual capacity as an 
intellectual and immortal being. 

2. Fortitude is a mean between Cowardice 
and Rashness, to which opposite extremes we are 
carried by the contrary passions of Fear and 
Daring respectively. Fortitude thus is a two- 
sided virtue, moderating two opposite tendencies : 
while Temperance is one-sided, moderating Desire 
alone. Life, rationally considered, bears un- 
doubtedly a high value, and is not to be lightly 
thrown away, or risked upon trivial or ignoble 
objects. The brave man is circumspect in his 
ventures, and moderate in his fears, which impHes 
that he does fear somewhat. He will fear super- 
human visitations, as the judgments of God. He 
will dread disgrace, and still more, sin. He will fear 
death in an unworthy cause. And even in a good 
cause, it has well been said : The truly brave man 
is not he who fears no danger, but the man whose 
mind subdues the fear, and braves the danger that 
nature shrinks from." The Duke of Marlborough is 
said to have quaked in the saddle as he rode into 



96 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



action, saying: **This poor body trembles at what 
the mind within is about to do." Fortitude then is 
the virtue that restrains fear and regulates venture- 
someness by the judgment of reason, in danger 
especially of a grand and glorious death. 

3. To the ancients, there was no grander object 
of devotion than the State, their native city : no 
direr misfortune than its dissolution, or the loss of 
its self-government : no nobler death than to die in 
arms in its defence. As old Tyrtseus sang : 

A noble thing it is to lie dead, fallen in the front ranks, 
A brave man in battle for his country.* 

Such a death was taken to be the seal and stamp 
of the highest fortitude. Nor has Christianity 
dimmed the glory that invests a soldier's death. 
Only it points to a brighter glory, and a death in a 
still nobler cause, the death of the martyr who dies 
for the faith, and becomes valiant in battle for what 
is more to him than any earthly city, the Church, 
the City of God. Nor must the martyr of charity, 
who dies in succouring his neighbour, go without 
the praise of fortitude : nor, in short, any one who 
braves death, or other heavy affliction, in the dis- 
charge of duty, or when forwarding a good cause. 

4. A man may brave death in a good cause, and 
not be doing an act of fortitude. So he may sub- 
scribe a large sum to a charitable purpose without 
any exercise of the virtue of charity. A virtue is 
then only exercised, when its outward act is per- 

r(Qvi^Jiivai yap Ka\6vy ivl TrpofidxoKri TreaSvra, 
£j'5^ iryadhv trepl f irarplSi ixapvaixcvov. 

{Tyrtaus apud Lycur§ ) 



OF FORTITUDE. 



formed from the proper motive of the virtue, and not 
from any lower motive. Thus the proper motive 
of Fortitude is the conviction that death is an evil, 
the risk of which is to be left out of count as a cir- 
cumstance relatively inconsiderable, when there is 
question of the defence of certain interests dearer to 
a good man than life. An improper motive would 
be anger, wliich, however useful as an accessory, by 
itself is not an intellectual motive at all, and there- 
fore no motive of virtue. The recklessness of an 
angry man is not Fortitude, It is not Fortitude to be 
brave from ignorance or stupidity, not appreciating 
the danger : nor again from experience, knowing 
that the apparent danger is not real, at least to 
yourself. The brave man looks a real danger in the 
face, and knows it, and goes on in spite of it, because 
so it is meet and just, with the cause that he has, to 
go on. 

5. We may notice as potential parts of Fortitude 
(s. vii., n. 3, p. 92), the three virtues of Magnifi- 
cence, Magnanimity, and Patience. It is the part of 
Patience, philosophically to endure all sufferings short 
of death. It is the part of the former two, to dare 
wisely, not in a matter of life and death, but in the 
matter of expense, for Magnificence, and of honour, 
for Magnanimity. Magnificence, technically under- 
stood, observes the right measure in the expenditure 
of large sums of money. As being conversant with 
large sums, it differs from Liberality. A poor man 
may be liberal out of his little store, but never 
magnificent. It is a virtue in the rich, not to be 
afraid of spending largely and lavishly on a great 
H 



98 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



occasion, or a grand purpose. The expense may be 
carried beyond what the occasion warrants : that is 
one vicious extreme. The other extreme would be 
to mar a costly work by sordid parsimony on a point 
of detail. It is not easy to be magnificent : in the 
first place, because not many are rich ; and then 
because riches are seldom united with greatness of 
soul and good judgment. Something analogous to 
the virtue of Magnificence is shown in the generous 
use of great abilities, or, in the supernatural order, 
of great graces. The destinies of the world He v/ith 
those men who have it in their power to be magni- 
ficent. 

6. We are come to Magnanimity and the Mag- 
nanimous Man, the great creation of Aristotle. As 
Magnanimity ranks under Fortitude, there must be 
some fear to which the Magnanimous Man rises 
superior, as the brave man rises superior to the fear 
of death. What Magnanimity overcomes is the fear 
of undeserved dishonour. The Magnanimous Man 
is he who rates himself as worthy of great honours, 
and is so worthy indeed. When honour is paid 
to such a one, he makes no great account of it, 
feehng that it is but his due, or even less than his 
due. If he is dishonoured and insulted, he despises 
the insult as an absurdity, offered to a man of his 
deserts. He is too conscious of his real worth to 
be much affected by the expression of his neigh- 
bour's view of him. For a man is most elated, 
when complimented on an excellence which he was 
not very sure of possessing: and most sensibly 
grieved at an insult, where he half suspects himself 



OF FORTITUDE. 



of really making a, poor figure, whereas he would 
like to make a good one. It is doubtless the serene 
and settled conviction that Englishmen generally 
entertain of the greatness of their country, that 
enables them to listen with equanimity to abuse of 
England, such as no other people in Europe would 
endure levelled at themselves. 

7. Proud is an epithet pretty freely applied to 
Englishmen abroad, and it seems to fit the character 
of the Magnanimous Man. He seems a Pharisee, 
and worse than a Pharisee. The Pharisee's pride 
was to some extent mitigated by breaking out into 
that disease of children and silly persons, vanity : 
he " did all his works to be seen of men." But 
here the disease is all driven inwards, and therefore 
more malignant. The Magnanimous Man is so 
much in conceit with himself as to have become a 
scorner of his fellows. He is self-sufficient, a deity 
to himself, the very type of Satanic pride. These 
are the charges brought against him. 

8. To purify and rectify the character of the 
Magnanimous Man, we need to take a leaf out of 
the book of Christianity. Not that there is anything 
essentially Christian and supernatural in what we 
are about to allege : otherwise it would not belong 
to philosophy : it is a truth of reason, but a truth 
generally overlooked, till it found its exponent in the 
Christian preacher, and its development in the 
articles of the Christian faith. The truth is this. 
There is in every human being what theologians 
have called man and man : man as he is of himself, 
man again as he is by the gift and gracious mercy 



.oe 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



of God. The reasonably Magnanimous Man is 
saved from pride by this distinction. Of himself, 
he knows that he is nothing but nothingness, mean- 
ness, sinfuhiess, and a walking sore of multitudinous 
actual sins. I know that there dwelleth not in 
me, that is, in my flesh, any good." (Rom. vii. i8.) 
If he is insulted, he takes it as his due, not any 
questionable due, for then he would resent the 
insult, but as being undoubtedly what he deserves. 
If he is honoured, he smiles at the absurdity of the 
compliments paid to him. It is as if an old gentle- 
man, a prey to gout and rheumatism, were lauded 
for his fieetness of foot. He is then truly magnani- 
mous on this side of his character by a kind of 
obverse magnanimity, that bears insults handsomely, 
as deserved, and honours modestly, as undeserved. 

9, But let us go round to the other side of the 
reasonably Magnanimous Man. He was defined 
to be, *' one that deems himself worthy of great 
honours, and is so worthy indeed." Now, nothing is 
truly worthy of honour but virtue. He must then 
be a good man, full of all virtues ; and all this good- 
ness that he has, he recognises as being in himi 
of God. He has received God's Spirit " — or 
something analogous in the natural order to the 
gift of the Holy Ghost — that he may know the 
things that are given him of God." (2 Cor. ii. 12.) 
It is told of St. Francis of Assisi, the humblest of 
men, that on one occasion when he and his com- 
panions received from some persons extraordinary 
marks of veneration, he, contrary to his usual wont, 
took it not at all amiss : and said to his companions, 



OF FORTITUDE. 



who wondered at his behaviour, Let them alone : 
they cannot too much honour the work of God in 
us." This magnanimity bears honours gracefully, 
and insult unflinchingly, from a consciousness of 
internal worth, which internal worth and goodness 
however it takes not for its o\vn native excellence, 
but holds as received from God, and unto God it 
refers all the glory. 

10. Thus the genuine Magnanimous Man is a 
paradox and a prodigy. He despises an insult as 
undeserved, and he takes it as his due. He is 
conscious of the vast good that is in him ; and he 
knows that there is no good in him. Highly 
honoured, he thinks that he gets but his due, while 
he believes that vials of scorn and ignominy may 
justly be poured upon him. He will bear the scorn, 
because he deserves it, and again, because it is 
wholly undeserved. The Magnanimous Man is the 
humble man. The secret of his marvellous virtue is 
his habit of practical discernment between the abyss 
of misery that he has within himself, as of himself, 
and the high gifts, also within him, which come of 
the mercy of God. Aristotle well says, Magnani- 
mity is a sort of robe of honour to the rest of the 
virtues : it both makes them greater and stands 
not v/ithout them : therefore it is hard to be truly 
magnanimous, for that cannot be without perfect 
virtue." We may add, that in the present order of 
Providence none can be magnaninious v/ithout 
supernatural aid, and supernatural considerations 
of the life of Christ, which however are not in 
place here. 



102 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



Readings. ~A.v., Eth., III., vii. ; St. Tlios., 2a 2ffi, 
q. 123, art 3, in corp. ; Ar., Eth., III., viii. ; St. Thos., 
2a 23e, q. 123, art. i, ad 2 ; Ar., Eth., III., vi. ; St. 
Thos., 2a 2se, q. 123, art. 4, 5. For the Magnificent 
and Magnanimous Man, Ar., Eth., IV., ii., iii. ; St. 
Thos., 2a 236, q. 129, art. 3, ad 4, 5. 

Section IX. — Of Justice. 

I, Justice is a habit residing in the will, prompt- 
ing that power constantly to render unto everyone 
his own. The fundamental notion of Justice is some 
sort of equality. Equality supposes two terms, 
physically distinct, or capable of existing separately, 
one from the other. Between such terms alone can 
equality be properly predicated. Any less distinc- 
tion than this leaves room only for equality im- 
properly so called, and therefore no room for what 
is properly termed Justice. When therefore Plato, 
going about to find a definition of Justice, which is 
a main object in his Republic, acquiesces in this 
position, that Justice consists in every part of the 
soul, rational, irascible, and concupiscible, fulfilling 
its own proper function, and not taking up the 
function of another, he fails for this reason, that all 
Justice is relative to another, but the different parts 
of one soul are not properly other and othei', since all 
go to make up one man : therefore, however much 
Justice may be identical with doing your own busi- 
ness, and leaving your neighbour free to do his, yet 
Lhis relation obtaining among the various parts of 
the soul cannot properly be called Justice. What 
Plato defines is the beauty, good order, and moral 



CF JUSTICE. 



103 



comeliness of the soul, but not Justice in any sense, 
inasmuch as it is not referred to any being human 
or divine, collective or individual, outside of the 
man himself. 

2. Going upon the principle that all Justice is of 
the nature of eqiiality, and is therefore relative to 
another^ ^nq arrive at the definition of general justice^ 
which is all virtue whatsoever, inasmuch as it bears 
upon another person than him who practises it. 
This Justice is perfect social virtue, the crown and 
perfection of all virtue from a statesman's point of 
view ; and in that aspect, as Aristotle says, "neither 
morning star nor evening star is so beautiful." 
Whoever has this virtue behaves well, not by himself 
merely, but towards others — a great addition. Many 
a one who has done well enough as an individual, 
has done badly in a public capacity : whence the 
proverb, that office shows the man. This Justice 
may well be called another man's good: though not 
in the sense of the sophists of old, and the altruists 
of our time, that virtue is a very good thing for 
everyone else than its possessor. Virtue, like health, 
may be beneficial to neighbours, but the first benefit 
of it flows in upon the soul to whom it belongs ; for 
virtue is the health of the soul. 

3. Another elementary notion of Justice connects 
it with Law, taking Justice to be conformity to Law. 
This notion exhibits legal justice^ which is the same 
thing, under another aspect, as the general justice 
mentioned above, inasmuch as general justice in- 
cludes the exercise of all virtues in so far as they 
bear upon the good of others : and the law, to which 



104 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES. 



legal justice conforms a man, enjoins acts of all 
virtues for the common good. It must be observed, 
however, that though there is no natural virtue ol 
which the law of man may not prescribe some exer- 
cise, still no human law enjoins all acts of all virtues, 
not even all obligatory acts. A man may fail in his 
duty though he has kept all the laws of man. In 
order then that legal justice may include the whole 
duty of man, it must be referred to that natural and 
eternal law of God, revealed or unrevealed, of which 
we shall speak hereafter. By being conformed to 
this divine law a man is a jitst man, a righteous man. 
It is this sense of Justice that appears in the theo- 
logical term, justification. In this sense, Zachary 
and Elizabeth were both just before God, walking 
in all the commandments of the Lord without 
blame." (St. Luke i. 6.) 

4. General, or legal, justice is not the cardinal 
virtue so called, but is in one point of view identical 
with all virtue. Distinguished, from the other three 
cardinal virtues is particular justice, which is divided 
into distributive and commutative justice. Distributive 
justice is exercised by the community through its 
head towards its individual members, so that there 
be a fair distribution of the common goods, in vary- 
ing amount and manner, according to the various 
merits and deserts of the several recipients. The 
matters distributed are public emoluments and 
honours, public burdens, rewards, and also punish- 
ments. Distributive justice is the virtue of the king 
and of the statesman, of the commander-in-chief, 
of the judge, and of the public functionary genep 



OF JUSTICE. 



ally. It is violated by favouritism, partiality, and 
jobbery. Distributive justice is the Justice that we 
adore in the great Governor of the Universe, saying 
that He is "just in all His works," even though we 
understand them not. When it takes the form of 
punishing, it is called uindictive justice. This is what 
the multitudes clamoured for, that filled the pre- 
cincts of the Palace of Whitehall in the days of 
Charles I. with cries of Justice, Justice, for the 
head of Strafford, 

5. Neither legal nor distributive justice fully 
answers to the definition of that virtue. Justice 
disposes us to give to another his own. The party 
towards whom Justice is practised must be wholly 
other and different from him who practises it. But 
it is clear that the member of a civil community is 
not wholly other and different from the State : he 
is partially identified with the civil community to 
which he belongs. Therefore neither the tribute of 
legal justice paid by the individual to the State, nor 
the grant of distributive justice from the State to the 
individual, is an exercise of Justice in the strictest 
sense. Again, what the individi:al pays to the State 
because he is legally bound to pay it, does not 
become the State's own until after payment. If he 
withhold it, though he do wrong, yet he is not said 
to be keeping any portion of the public property in 
his private hands : he only fails to make some of his 
private property public, which the law bids him 
abdicate and make over. If this be true of money 
and goods, it is still more evidently true of honour 
and services. In like manner, in the matter of di^- 



io6 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES 



trihiitive justice, the emoluments which a subject 
has a claim to, the rewards which he has merited oi 
the State, does not become his till he actually gets 
them into his hands. It may be unfair and immoral 
that they are withheld from him, and in that case, 
so long as the circumstances remain the same, the 
obhgation rest with and presses upon the State, 
and those who represent it, to satisfy his claim : still 
the State is not keeping the individual from that 
which is as yet his own. In the language of the 
Roman lawyers, he has at best a jus ad rem, a right 
that the thing be made his, but not a jus in re ; that 
is, the thing is not properly his before he actually 
gets it. 

6. Commutative justice alone is Justice strictly so 
called : for therein alone the parties to the act are 
perfectly other and other, and the matter that 
passes between them, if withheld by one of the 
parties, would make a case of keeping the other out 
of that which he could still properly call by right his 
own. Comrmctative justice runs between two indi- 
viduals, or two independent States, or between the 
State and an individual inasmuch as the latter is an 
independent person, having rights of his own against 
the former. This justice is called commutativey from 
being concerned with exchanges, or contracts, volun- 
tary and involuntary. The idea of voluntary con- 
tract, like that between buyer and seller, is familiar 
enough. But the notion of an involuntary contract is 
technical, and requires explanation. Whoever, then, 
wrongfully takes that which belongs to another, 
enters into an involuntary contract, or makes an 



OF JUSTICE I07 

involuntary exchange, with the party. This he may 
do by taking away his property, honour, reputation, 
hberty, or bodily ease and comfort. This is an 
involuntary transaction, against the will of the party 
that suffers. It is a contract, because the party that 
does the damage takes upon himself, whether he will 
or no, by the very act of doing it, the obligation of 
making the damage good, and of restoring what he 
has taken away. This is the obligation of resiiUition, 
which attaches to breaches of commutative justice, 
and, strictly speaking, to them alone. Thus, if a 
minister has not promoted a deserving officer in 
face of a clear obligation of distributive justice, the 
obligation indeed remains as that of a duty unful- 
filled, so long as he remains minister with the 
patronage in his hands : but the promotion, if he 
finally makes it, is not an act of restitution : it is 
giving to the officer that which was not his before. 
And if the opportunity has passed, he owes the 
officer nothing in compensation. But if he has 
insulted the officer, he owes him an apology for all 
time to come : he must give back that honour which 
belonged to the officer, and of which he has robbed 
him. This is restitution. In a thousand practical 
cases it is important, and often a very nice question 
to decide, whether a particular offence, such as 
failure to pay taxes, be a sin against commutative 
justice or only against some more general form of 
the virtue. If the former, restitution is due : if the 
latter, repentance only and purpose of better things 
in future, but not reparation of the past. 

7. The old notion, that Justice is minding your 



io8 



OF HABITS AND VIRTUES, 



own business, and leaving your neighbour to mind 
his, furnishes a good rough statement of the obH- 
gations of commutative justice. They are mainly 
negative, to leave your neighbour alone in his right 
of life and limb, of liberty and property, of honour 
and reputation. But in two ways your neighbour's 
business may become yours in justice. The first 
way is, if you have any contract with him, whether 
a formal contract, as that between a railway com- 
pany and its passengers, or a virtual contract, by 
reason of some office that you bear, as the office 
of a bishop and pastor in relation to the souls of 
his flock. The second way in which comm^itative 
justice binds you to positive action, is when undue 
damage is likely to occur to another from some 
activity of yours. If, passing by, I see my neigh- 
bour's house on fire, not having contracted to watch 
it for him, and not having caused the fire myself, I 
am not bound in strict justice to warn him of his 
danger. I am bound indeed by charity, but that is 
not the point here. But if the fire has broken out 
from my careless use of fire, commutative justice 
binds me to raise the alarm. 

8. The most notable potential parts of Justice — 
Religion, Obedience, Truthfulness — enter into the 
treatise of Natural Law. 

Readiu^. — Ar., Eth,, V., i. ; Plato, Rep., 433 a; 
ih.y 443 c, D, e; St. Thos., 2a 2ae, q. 58, art. 2, in corp; 

q. 58, art. 5 ; ib,, q. 58, art. 6, in corp; ih,y q. 58, 
art. 7 ; ib.y q. 58, art g, in corp. ; ib,, q. 61, art. i, in 
corp. ; ib., q. 61, art. 3, in corp. ; Ar., Eth., V., ii., 12, 
13 ; St. Thos., 2a 2ae, q. 62, art. i, in corp., nd 2. 



MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 



Part II. Deontology. 
CHAPTER VL 

OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 

Section I. — Of the natitval difference between Good and Evil. 

I. A GRANITE boulder lying on an upland moor 
stands indifferently the August sun and the January 
frost, flood and drought. It neither blooms in 
spring, nor fades in autumn. It is all one to the 
boulder whether it rem.ain in the picturesque soli- 
tude where the glacier dropped it, or be laid in the 
glitter of a busy street. It has no growth nor 
development : it is not a subject of evolution : there 
is no goal of perfection to which it is tending by 
dint of inward germinal capacity seconded by favour- 
able environment. Therefore it does not matter 
what you do with it : all things come alike to that 
lump of rock. 

2. But in a cranny or cleft of the same there is 
a little flower growing. You cannot do what you 
will with that flower. It has its exigencies and 
requirements. Had it a voice, it could say, what 
the stone never could : * I must have this or that : 
I must have light, I must have moisture, a certain 
heat, some soil to grow in.' There is a course to 
be run by this flower and the plant that bears it, 
a development to be wrought out, a perfection to 



no OP THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 



be achieved. For this end certain conditions are 
necessary, or helpful: certain others prejudicial, or 
altogether intolerable. In fact, that plant has a 
progressive nature, and therewith is a subject of 
good and evil. Good for that plant is what favours 
its natural progress, and evil is all that impedes it. 

3. All organic natures are progressive : that is, 
each individual of them is apt to make a certain 
progress, under certain conditions, from birth to 
maturity. But man alone has his progress in any 
degree in his own hands, to make or to mar. Man 
alone, in the graphic phrase of Appius Claudius, is 
faber fortimce sues, the shaper of his own destiny." 
Any other plant or animal, other than man, however 
miserable a specimen of its kind it finally prove to 
be, has always done the best for itself under the cir- 
cumstances : it has attained the limit fixed for it by 
its primitive germinal capacity, as modified by the 
events of its subsequent environment. The miser- 
able animal that howls under your window at night, 
is the finest dog that could possibly have come of 
his blood and breeding, nurture and education. But 
there is no man now on earth that has done all for 
himself that he might have done. We all fall short 
in many things of the perfection that is within our 
reach. Man therefore needs to stir himself, and to 
be energetic with a free, self-determined energy to 
come up to the standard of hum.anity. It is only 
his free acts that are considered by the morahst. 
Such is the definition of Moral Science, that it deals 
with human acts ; acts, that is, whereof man is master 
to do or not to do. (c. i., nn. i, 2,) 



DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL. ill 



4. We have it, then, that a morally good act is 
an act that makes towards the progress of human 
nature in him who does it, and which is freely done. 
Similarly, a morally evil act is a bar to progress, or 
a diversion of it from the right line, being also a 
free act. Now, that act only can make for the 
progress of human nature, which befits and suits 
human nature, and suits it in its best and most 
distinctive characteristic. What is best in man, 
what characterises and makes man, what the old 
schoolmen called the form of man, is his reason. 
To be up to reason is to be up to the standard of 
humanity. Human progress is progress on the lines 
of reason. To make for that progress, and thereby 
to be morally good, an act must be done, not blindly, 
brutishly, sottishly, or on any impulse of passion, 
however beneficial in its effects, but deliberately, and 
in conscious accordance with the reasonable nature 
of the doer. 

5. Whatever be man's end and Highest good, he 
must go about to compass it reasonably. He must 
plan, and be systematic, and act on principle. For 
instance, if the public health be the highest good, the 
laws which govern it must be investigated, and their 
requirements carried out, without regard to senti- 
ment. If pleasure be the good, we must be artists 
of pleasure. If, however, as has been seen (c. ii.) 
the highest good of man is the highest play of reason 
herself in a life of contemplation, to be prepared 
for, though it cannot be adequately and worthily 
lived, in this world, then it is through following 
reason, through subjecting appetite to reason b> 



112 OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 



temperance, and the will to reason by justice, and 
reason herself by a " reasonable service " to God, 
that this end and consummation must be wrought 
out. Thus, in Plato's phrase {Rcp.f 589 b), the 
moral man acts so that the inner man within him, 
the rational part of his nature, shall be strongest ; 
while he watches with a husbandman's care over the 
many-headed beast of appetite, rearing and training 
the creature's tame heads, and not letting the wild 
ones grow ; for this purpose making an ally of the 
lion, the irascible part of his nature, and caring for 
all the parts in common, making them friends to one 
another and to himself." In this way he will meet 
the true exigency of his nature as a wJiole, with due 
regard to the proper order and subordination of the 
parts. He who lives otherwise, acts in contradiction 
to his rational self. (c. v., s. iii., n. 3, p. 74). 

6. The result of the above reasoning, if result it 
hc-s, should be to explain and justify tha Stoic rule, 
natures convcnienter vivere, to live according to nature. 
Bat some one will say : * That is the very ideal of 
wickedness: all good in man comes of overcoming 
nature, and doing violence to natural cravings : 
live according to nature, and you will go straight 
to the devil.' I answer: ' Live according to a part of 
your iiaticre, and that the baser and lower, though 
also the more impetuous and clamorous part, and 
you will certainly go where you say : but live up 
to the whole of your nature, as f^.xpliined in the last 
paragraph, and you will be a man indeed, and will 
reach the goal of human happiness.' But again it 
may be objected, that our very reason, to which the 



DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL. 113 



rest of our nature is naturally subordinate, frequently 
prompts us to do amiss. The objection is a just 
one, in so far as it goes upon a repudiation of the old 
Platonic position, that all moral evil comes of the 
body, wherein the soul is imprisoned, and of the 
desires which the body fastens upon the soul. Were 
that so, all sins would be sins of sensuality. But 
there are spiritual sins, not prompted by any lust 
or weakness of the body, as pride and mutiny, self- 
opiniatedness, rejection of Divine revelation. The 
objection turns on sins such as these. The answer 
is, that spiritual sins do not arise from any exigency 
of reason, but from a deficiency of reason ; not from 
that faculty calling upon us, as we are reasonable 
men, to take a certain course, in accordance with a 
just and full view of the facts of the case, but from 
reason failing to look facts fully in the face, and 
considering only some of them to the neglect of 
others, the consideration of which would alter the 
decision. Thus a certain proud creature mentioned 
in Scripture thought of the magnificence of the 
throne above the stars of God, on the mountain of 
the covenant, on the sides of the north : he did not 
think how such a pre-eminence would become him 
as a creature. He had in view a rational good 
certainly, but not a rational good for him. Partial 
reason, like a little knowledge, is a dangerous thing. 

7. As it is not in the power of God to bring it 
about, that the angles of a triangle taken together 
shall amount to anything else than two right angles, 
so it is not within the compass of Divine omnipo- 
tence to create a man for whom it shall be a good 



114 OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 



and proper thing, and befitting his nature, to 
blaspheme, to perjure himself, to abandon himself 
recklessly to lust, or anger, or any other passion. 
God need not have created man at all, but He could 
not have created him with other than human exigen- 
cies. The reason is, because God can only create 
upon the pattern of His own essence, which is 
imitable, outside of God, in certain definite lines of 
possibility. These possibilities, founded upon the 
Divine essence and discerned by the Divine intelh- 
gence, are the Archetype Ideas, among which the 
Divine will has to choose, when it proceeds to create. 
The denial of this doctrine in the Nominalist and 
Cartesian Schools, and their reference to the arbi- 
trary will of God of the eternal, immutable, and 
absolutely necessary relations of possible things, is 
the subversion of all science and philosophy. 

8. Still less are moral distinctions between good 
and evil to be set down to the law of the State, or 
the fashion of society. Human convention can no 
more constitute moral good than it can physical 
good, or mathematical or logical truth. It is only 
in cases where two or more courses are tolerable, 
and one of them needs to be chosen and adhered to 
for the sake of social order, that human authority 
steps in to elect and prescribe one of those ways of 
action, and brand the others as illegitimate, which 
would otherwise be lawful. This is called the 
making of sl positive law. 

Readings. — St. Thos., la 2se, q. i8, art. 5, m 
corp. ; la 2£e, q. 71, art. 2 ; Plato, Rep., 588 B to 
end of bk. ix. ; Ar., Eth., IX., iv., nn. 4 — 10 ; Suarez, 



DUTY AND SIN. 



115 



De Legibtts, II., vi., nn. 4, 11 ; Cicero, De Legibus, i., 
cc. 15—17- 

Section II. — How Good becomes botmden Duty, and 
Evil is advanced to Sin. 

I. The great problem of Moral Philosophy is the 
explanation of the idea, / ought, (c. i., n. 6.) We are 
now come close up to the solution of that problem. 
The word ought denotes the necessary bearing of 
means upon end. To every ottght there is a pendent 
if. The means ought to be taken, if the end is to be 
secured. Thus we say : ' You ought to start betimes, 
if you are to catch your train.' 'You ought to 
study harder, if you are to pass your examination.' 
The person spoken to might reply: 'But what if I 
do miss my train, and fail in my examination ? ' ' He 
might be met with another ought : 'You ought not 
to miss the one, if you are to keep your appoint- 
ment : or to fail in the other, if you are to get into 
a profession.' Thus the train of oughts and ifs 
extends, until we come finally to a concatenation 
like the following : ' You ought not to break your 
word, or to give needless pain to your parents, if you 
don't want to do violence to that nature which is 
yours as a reasonable being,' or 'to thwart your own 
moral development,' — and so on in a variety of 
phrases descriptive of the argument of the last section. 
Here it seems the chain is made fast to a staple in 
the wall. If a person goes on to ask, 'Well, what 
if I do contradict my rational self?' we can only 
tell him that he is a fool for his question. The 
oughts, such as those wherewith our illustration 



ii6 OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 



commenced, Kant calls the hypothetical imperative, 
the form being, * You must, unless : ' but the ought 
wherein it terminated, he calls the categorical impera- 
tive, the alternative being such as no rational man 
can accept, and therefore no alternative at all. 

2. This doctrine of the Categorical Imperative is 
correct and valuable so far as it goes. But then it 
does not go far enough. The full notion of v;^hat a 
man oitght, is what he must do imder pain of sin. Sin 
is more than folly, more than a breach of reason. 
It is mild reproach to a great criminal to tell him 
that he is a very foolish person, a walking unreason- 
ableness. If he chooses to contradict his rational 
self, is not that his own affair ? Is he not his own 
master, and may he not play the fool if he likes ? 
The answer is, ' No, he is not his own master ; he 
is under law, and his folly and self-abuse becomes 
criminal and sinful, by being in contravention of the 
law that forbids him to throw himself away thus 
wantonly.' 

3. Kant readily takes up this idea, shaping it 
after his own fashion. He contends, — and herein 
his doctrine is not merely deficient, but positively in 
error, — that the Categorical Imperative, uttered by a 
man's own reason, has the force of a law, made by 
that same reason ; so that the legislative authority 
is within the breast of the doer, who owes it obedi- 
ence. This he calls the autonomy of reason. It is 
also called Independent Morality, inasmuch as it 
establishes right and wrong without regard to 
external authority, or to the consequences of actions, 
or to rewards and punishments. The doctrine is 



DUTY AND SIN. 



erroneous, inasmuch as it undertakes to settle the 
matter of right and wrong without reference to 
external authority ; and inasmuch as it makes the 
reason within a man, not the promulgator of the 
law to him, but his own legislator. For a law is a 
precept, a command : now no one issues precepts, or 
gives commands, to himself. To command is an act 
of jurisdiction ; and jurisdiction, like justice (see c. v., 
s. ix., n. I, p. 102) requires a distinction of persons, 
one ruler, and another subject. But the reason in a 
man is not a distinct subject from the will, appetites, 
or other faculties within him, to which reason 
dictates : they are all one nature, one person, one 
man ; consequently, no one of them can strictly 
be said to command the rest ; and the dictate of 
reason, as emanating from within oneself, is not a 
law. But without a law, there is no strict obliga- 
tion. Therefore the whole theory of obligation is 
not locked up in the Categorical Imperative, as 
Kant formulated it. 

4. The above argumentation evinces that God is 
not under any law ; for there is no other God above 
Him to command Him. As for the ideas of what is 
meet and just in the Divine intelligence, though the 
Divine will, being a perfect will, is not liable to act 
against them, yet are those ideas improperly called 
a law to the Divine will, because intellect and will 
are identified in one God. Kant's doctrine makes 
us all gods. It is a deification of the human intellect, 
and identification of that intellect with the supreme 
and universal Reason ; and at the same time a 
release of the human will from all authority 



ii8 OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 



extraneous to the individual. This amounts to 
a putting off of all authority properly so called, and 
makes each man as sovereign and unaccountable as 
his Maker. " Thy heart is lifted up, and thou hast 
said : I am God, and sit in the chair of God : and 
hast set thy heart as if it were the heart of God : 
whereas thou art a man and not God." (Ezech. 
xxviii. 2.) Kant is thus the father of the pantheistic 
school of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. 

5. But it has been contended that this phrase 
about a man who does wrong breaking a law, is only 
a metaphor and figure of speech, unless it be used 
with reference to the enactment of some civil com- 
munity. Thus John Austin says that a natural law 
is a law which is not, but which he who uses the 
expression thinks ought to be made. At this rate 
sin is not a transgression of any law, except so far 
as it happens to be, in the lawyer's sense of the 
word, a crime, or something punishable in a human 
court of justice. There will then be no law but 
man's law. How then am I obliged to obey man's 
law ? Dr. Bain answers : " Because, if you disobey, 
you will ho. punished.'' But that punishment will be 
either just or unjust : if unjust, it originates no 
obligation : if just, it presupposes an obligation, as 
it presupposes a crime and sin, that is, an obligation 
violated. There seems to be nothing left for John 
Austin but to fall back upon Kant and his Cate- 
gorical Imperative, and say that whoever rebels 
against the duly constituted authority of the State in 
which he lives, is a rebel against the reason that 
dwells within his own breast, and which requires 



DUTY AND SIN. 



119 



him to behave like a citizen. So that ultimately it 
is not the State, but his own reason that he has 
offended ; and the State has no authority over him 
except what his own reason gives. 

6. If this were true, there would be no sin any- 
where except what is called philosophical sin, that is, 
a breach of the dignity of man's rational nature ; 
and the hardest thing that could be said in repro- 
bation of a wrongdoer, would be that he had gone 
against himself, and against his fellow-men, by out- 
raging reason, the common attribute of the race. 

7. Far worse than that has the sinner done. He 
has offended against his own reason, and thereby 
against a higher Reason, substantially distinct from 
his, standing to it in the relation of Archetype to 
type, a Living Reason, e/xyjrvxo'i (cf. Ar., Eth., 
v., iv., 7), purely and supremely rational. The 
Archetype is outraged by the violation of the type. 
Moreover, as the two are substantially distinct, the 
one being God, the other a faculty of man, there is 
room for a command, for law. A man may trans- 
gress and sin, in more than the philosophical sense 
of the word : he may be properly a law-breaker, by 
offending against this supreme Reason, higher and 
other than his own. 

8. Here we must pause and meditate a parable. 
— There was a certain monastery where the monks 
lived in continual violation of monastic observance. 
Their Abbot was a holy man, a model of what a 
monk ought to be. But though perfectly cognisant 
of the delinquencies of his community, he was con- 
tent to display to his subjects the edifying example 



i2'j OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 



of his own life, and to let it appear that he was aware 
of their doings and pained at them. He would croon 
softly as he went about the house old Hell's words : 
Not so, my sons, not so : why do ye these kind oi 
things, very wicked things ? " But the monks took 
no notice of him. It happened in course of time 
that the Abbot went away for about ten days. What 
he did in that time, never transpired : though there 
was some whisper of certain " spiritual exercises," 
which he was said to have been engaged in. Certain 
it is, that he returned to his monastery, as he left 
it, a monk devout and regular : the monk was the 
same, but the Abbot was mightily altered. The 
morning after his arrival, a Chapter was held ; the 
Abbot had the Rule read from cover to cover, and 
announced his intention of enforcing the same. 
And he was as good as his word. Transgressions 
of course abounded : but the monks discovered 
that to transgress was quite a different thing now 
from what it had been. Seeing the law proclaimed, 
and the Abbot in earnest to enforce it, they too 
reformed themselves ; the few who would not reform 
had to leave. The subsequent holy lives of those 
monks do not enter into this history. 

9. Now, we might fancy God our Lord like the 
Abbot of that monastery in the early years of his 
rule. We might fancy the Supreme Reason, dis- 
pleased indeed, as Reason must be, at the excesses 
and folHes of mankind, but not otherwise com- 
manding men to avoid those evil courses. Were 
God to be thus quiescent, what we have called (n. 6) 
philosophical s/«, would indeed carry this additional 



DUTY AND SIN. 



121 



malice, beyond what was there set down, of being 
an offence against God, but it would not be a 
grievous offence : for it would not be a sin in the 
proper sense of the term, not being a transgression 
of the law of God, inasmuch as God, by the suppo- 
sition, would have given no law. But the supposition 
itself is absurd. God could not so withhold His 
command. He is free indeed not to command, but 
that only by not creating. If He wills to have 
creatures, He must likewise will to bind them to 
certain lines of action : which will to bind in God is 
a law to the creature. 

10. This assertion, that God cannot but will to bind 
His creatures to certain lines of action ^ must be proved, 
though in the ascent we have to mount to high 
regions, and breathe those subtle airs that are 
wafted round the throne of the Eternal. As God 
is the one source of all reality and of all power, 
not only can there be no being which He has not 
created and does not still preserve, but no action 
either can take place without His concurrence. God 
must go with His every creature in its every act : 
otherwise, on the creature's part, nothing could be 
done. Now, God cannot be indifferent what manner 
of act He shall concur unto. A servant or a subject 
may be indifferent what command he receives : he 
may will simply to obey, — to go here or there, as he 
is bid, or to be left without orders where he is. 
That is because he leaves the entire direction and 
management of the household to his master. But 
for God to be thus indifferent what action He should 
lend His concurrence to, would be to forego ail 



123 OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 



design and purpose of His own as to the use and 
destiny of the creatures which He has made and 
continually preserves. This God cannot do, for He 
cannot act aimlessly. It would be renouncing the 
direction of His own work, and making the creature 
His superior. God is incapable of such renunciation 
and subservience. He must, then, will the coopera- 
tion which He lends, and the concurrent action of 
the creature, to take a certain course, regulated and 
prescribed by Himself: which is our proposition, 
that God cannot but will to bind His creatures 
to certain lines of action. If His free creatures 
choose to stray from these lines, God indeed 
still cooperates, and to His cooperation is to be 
ascribed the physical goodness of the action, not its 
moral inordinatencss and inopportuneness. Still, as the 
action is morally inordinate, God may be said to 
cooperate, in a manner, where He would not : 
whence we gather some conception of the enormity 
of sin. (See c. vii., nn. 5, 6, pp. 130, 131.) 

11. The lines of action laid down and prescribed 
by God are not arbitrary and irrespective of the 
subject of the command. They are determined in 
each case by the nature of the subject. The Author 
of Nature is not apt to subvert that order which 
proceeds from Himself. He bids every creature act 
up to that nature wherein He has created it. His 
commands follow the line of natural exigency. 
What this natural exigency amounts to in man in 
regard to his human acts, we have already seen, 
(c. vi., s. i., p. 109.) 

12. The difference between a necessary and a free 



DUTY AND SIN. 



123 



agent is, that the former is determined by its nature 
to act in a certain way, and cannot act otherwise : 
the latter may act in more ways than one. Still, as 
we have seen, the nature even of a free agent is not 
indifferent to all manner of action. It requires, 
though it does not constrain, the agent to act in 
certain definite wa3^s, the ways of moral goodness. 
Acting otherwise, as he may do, the free agent gain- 
says his own nature, taken as a whole, a thing that 
a necessary agent can nowise do. God therefore 
who, as we have shown, wills and commands all 
creatures whatsoever to act on the lines of their 
nature, has especial reason to give this command to 
His rational creatures, with whom alone rests the 
momentous freedom to disobey. 

13. We are now abreast of the question, of such 
burning interest in these days, as to the connection 
of Ethics with Theology, or of Morality with Religion. 
I will not enquire whether the dogmatic atheist is 
logically consistent in maintaining any distinction 
between right and wrong: happily, dogmatic atheists 
do not abound. But there are many who hold that, 
whether there be a God or no, the fact ought not to 
be imported into Moral Science ; that a Professor ot 
Ethics, as such, has no business with the name of 
the Almighty on his lips, any more than a lecturer 
on Chemistry or Fortification. This statement 
must be at once qualified by an important proviso. 
If we have any duties of worship and praise towards 
our Maker : if there is such a virtue as rehgion, and 
such a sin as blasphemy : surely a Professor oi 
Morals must point that out. He cannot in tnat case 



124 OF THE ORIGIN OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 



suppress all reference to God, for the same reason 
that he cannot help going into the duties of a man 
to his wife, or of an individual to the State, if 
marriage and civil government are natural institu- 
tions. If there is a God to be worshipped, any book 
on Moral Science is incomplete without a chapter 
on Religion. But the question remains, whether 
the name of God should enter into the other 
chapters, and His being and authority into the very 
foundations of the science. I do not mean the meta- 
physical foundations ; for Metaphysics are like a 
two-edged sword, that cleaves down to the very 
marrow of things, and must therefore reveal and 
discover God. But Morality, like Mathematics, 
takes certain metaphysical foundations for granted, 
without enquiring into them. On these foundations 
we rear the walls, so to speak, of the science of 
Ethics without reference to God, but we cannot put 
the roof and crown upon the erection, unless we 
speak of Him and of His lav/. Moral distinctions, as 
we saw (c. vi., s. i. n. 7, p. 113), are antecedent to the 
Divine command to observe them : and though they 
rest ultimately on the Divine nature, that ultimate 
ground belongs to Metaphysics, not to Ethics. Ethics 
begin with human nature, pointing out that there 
are certain human acts that do become a man, and 
others that do not. (c. vi., s. i., p. log.) To see this, it is 
not necessary to look up above man. Thus we shall 
prove lying, suicide, and murder to be wrong, and 
good fellowship a duty, without needing to mention 
the Divine Being, though by considering Him the 
proof gains in cogency. Or rather, apart from God 



DUTY AND SIN. 



125 



we shall prove certain acts wrong, and other acts 
obligatory as duties, philosophically speaking, with an 
initial and fundamental wrongness and obligation. 
In the present section we have proved once for all, 
that what is wrong philosophically, or is philo- 
sophically a duty, is the same also theologically. 
Thus the initial and fundamental obligation is 
transformed into an obligation formal and complete. 
Therefore, hereafter we shall be content to have 
established the philosophical obligation, knowing 
that the theological side is invariably conjoined 
therewith. As St. Thomas says (la 23d, q. 71, 
art. 6, ad 5) : By theologians sin is considered 
principally as it is an offence against God : but by 
the moral philosopher, inasmuch as it is contrary to 
reason." But what is contrary to reason offends 
God, and is forbidden by Divine law, and thus 
becomes a sin. No God, no sin. Away from God, 
there is indecency and impropriety, unreasonableness , 
abomination, and brntality, all this in view of outraged 
humanity: there is likewise crime against the State: 
but the formal element of sin is wanting. With sin, 
of course, disappears also the punishment of sin as 
such. Thus to leave God wholly out of Ethics and 
Natural Law, is to rob moral evil of half its terrors, 
and of that very half which is more easily under- 
standed of the people." A consideration for school- 
managers. 

Readings, — St. Thos., la, q. 22, art. 2, in corp. 
(against Lucretius, ii. 646 — 651) ; Suarez, DeLegibus, 
IL, vi., nn. 3, 5—9, 13, 14, 17, 20—24. 



CHAPTER VII. 



OF THE ETERNAL LAW. 

I. A LAW is defined to be : A precept just and 
abiding, given for promulgation to a perfect com- 
munity. A law is primarily a rule of action. The 
first attribute of a law is that it be just : just to 
the subject on whom it is imposed, as being no 
harmful abridgment of his rights : just also to 
other men, as not moving him to injustice against 
them. An unjust law is no law at all, for it is 
not a rule of action. Still, we may sometimes 
be bound, when only our own rights are infringed, 
to submit to such an imposition, not as a law, 
for it is none, but on the score of prudence, to 
escape direr evils. A law is no fleeting, occasional 
rule of conduct, suited to meet some passing emer- 
gency or superficial disturbance. The reason of a 
law lies deep down, lasting and widespread in the 
nature of the governed. A law, then, has these two 
further attributes of permanence in duration and 
amplitude in area. Every law is made for all time, 
and lives on with the life of the communit}^ for whom 
it is enacted, for ever, unless it be either expressly 
or implicitly repealed. A law in a community is like 
a habit in an individual, an accretion to nature, 
which abides as part of the natural being, and guides 



OF THE ETERNAL LAW, 



12? 



henceforth the course of natural action. This 
analogy holds especially of those laws, which are not 
enacted all of a sudden — and such are rarely the 
best laws — but grow upon the people with gradual 
growth unmarked, like a habit by the repetition of 
acts, in the way of immemorial custom, I have said 
that a law is for a community, that it requires ampli- 
tude and large area. A law is not laid down for an 
individual, except so far as his action is of importance 
to the community. The private concerns of one " 
man do not afford scope and room enough for a law. 
Neither do the domestic affairs of one family. A 
father is not a legislator. A law aims at a deep, 
far-reaching, primary good. But the private good 
of an individual, and the domestic good of a family, 
are not primary goods, inasmuch as the individual 
and the family are not primary but subordinate 
beings : not complete and independent, but depen- 
dent and partial ; not wholes but parts. The indi- 
vidual is part of the family, and the family is part of 
a higher community. It is only when we are come 
to some community which is not part of any higher, 
that we have found the being, the good of which is 
primary good, the aim of law. Such a community, 
not being part of any higher community in the same 
order, is in its own order a perfect community. 
Thus, in the temporal order, the individual is part of 
the State. The State is a perfect community ; and 
the good of the State is of more consequence than 
the temporal well-being of any individual citizen. 
The temporal good of the individual, then, is matter 
of law, in so far as it is subservient to the good of 



128 



OF THE ETERNAL LAW. 



the State. We have, then, to hold that a law is 
given to the members of a perfect community for the 
good of the whole. Not every precept, therefore, is 
a law : nor every superior a lawgiver : for it is not 
every superior that has charge of the good of a 
perfect community. Many a precept is given to an 
individual, either for his private good, as when a 
father commands his child, or for the private good 
of him that issues the precept, as when a master 
commands a servant. But every law is a precept : 
for a law is an imperative rule of action, in view of 
a good that is necessary, at least with the necessity 
of convenience. To every law there are counsels 
attached. A law may be said to be a micleiis of pre- 
cept, having an envelope of counsel. Every law has 
also a pendent called punishment for those who 
break it : this is called the sanction of the law. A law 
is also for prontidgati on, as a birch rod for application. 
The promulgation, or application, brings the law 
home to the subject, but is not part of the law itself. 
So much for the definition of Law. 

2. We have to learn to look upon the whole 
created universe, and the fulness thereof, angels, 
men, earth, sun, planets, fixed stars, all things visible 
and invisible, as one great and perfect community, 
whose King and Lawgiver is God. He is King, 
because He is Creator and Lord. But lordship and 
kingship are different things, even in Godr It is one 
thing to be lord and master, owner and proprietor of 
a chattel, property and domain : it is another thing 
to be king and governor, lawgiver and judge of 
political subjects. The former is called power of 



OF THE ETERNAL LAW. 



129 



dominion^ or right of ownership, the latter is power oj 
jurisdiction. Power of dominion is for the good ol 
him who wields it; but power of jurisdiction is for 
the good of the governed. As God is Lord of the 
universe, He directs all its operations to His own 
glory. As He is King, He governs as a king should 
govern, for the good of His subjects. In intellectual 
creatures, whose will is not set in opposition to God, 
the subject's good and the glory of the Lord finally 
coincide. God's power of dominion is the concern 
of theologians : the moralist is taken up with His 
power of jurisdiction, from whence emanates the 
moral law. 

3. In the last chapter (s. ii., nn. g, 10, pp. 120,121), 

we stated the moral law in these terms, that God 
wills to bind His creatures to certain lines of action, not 
arbitrary lines, as we saw, but the natural lines o{ 
each creature's being. The law thus stated takes in 
manifestly a wider field than that of moral action. 
There is in fact no action of created things that is 
not comprehended under this statement. It com- 
prises the laws of physical nature and the action ol 
physical causes, no less than the moral law and 
human acts. It is the one primeval law of the 
universe, antecedent to all actual creation, and co- 
eternal with God. And yet not necessary as God : 
for had God not decreed from all eternity to create 
— and He need not have decreed it — neither would 
He have passed in His own Divine Mind this second 
decree, necessarily consequent as it is upon the 
decree of creation, namely, that every creature 
should act in the mode of action proper of its kind 
J 



130 



OF THE ETERNAL LAW. 



This decree, supervening from eternity upon the 
creative decree, is called the Eternal Lavv^ 

4. This lav^^ does not govern the acts of God 
Himself. God ever does what is wise and good, not 
because He binds Himself by the decree of His own 
will so to act, but because of His all-perfect nature. 
His own decrees have not for Him the force of a 
precept : that is impossible in any case : yet He 
cannot act against them, as His nature allows not of 
irresolution, change of mind, and inconsistency. 

5. Emanating from the will of God, and resting 
upon the nature of the creature, it w'ould seem that 
the Eternal Law must be irresistible. Who re- 
sisteth His will?" asks the Apostle. (Rom. ix. ig.) 
"The streams of sacred rivers are flowing upwards, 
and justice and the universal order is wrenched 
back." (Euripides, Medea, 499.) It is only the per- 
version spoken of by the poet, that can an3'\vise 
supply the instance asked for by the Apostle. The 
thing is impossible in the physical order. The 
rivers cannot flow upwards, under the conditions 
under which rivers usually flow: but justice and 
purity, truth and religion may be wrenched back, in 
violation of nature and of the law eternal. The one 
thing that breaks this law is sin. Sin alone is pro- 
perly unnatural. The world is full of physical evils, 
pain, famine, blindness, disease, decay and death. 
But herein is nothing against nature ; the several 
agents act up to their nature, so far as it goes : it is 
the defect of nature that makes the evil. P>ut sin is 
no mere shortcoming: it is a turning round and 
^oing against nature, as though the July sun should 



OF THE ETERNAL LAW. 



freeze a man, or the summer air suffocate him. 
Physical evil comes by the defect of nature, and by 
permission of the Eternal Law. But the moral evil 
of sin is a breach of that law. 

6. A great point with modern thinkers is the 
inviolability of the laws of physical nature, e.g., of 
gravitation or of electrical induction. If these laws 
are represented, as J. S. Mill said they should be, as 
tendencies only, they are truly inviolable. The law oi 
gravitation is equally fulfilled in a falling body, in a 
body suspended by a string, and in a body borne up 
by the ministry of an angel. There is no law of 
nature to the effect that a supernatural force shall 
never intervene. Even if, as may be done perhaps 
in the greatest miracles, God suspends His con- 
currence, so that the creature acts not at all, even 
that would be no violation of the physical law of 
the creature's action : for all that such a law provides 
is, that the creature, if it acts at all, shall act in a 
certain way, not that God shall always give the con- 
currence which is the necessary condition of its 
acting at all. The laws of physical nature then 
are, strict!}- speaking, never violated, although the 
course of nature is occasionally altered by super- 
natural interference, and continually by free human 
volition. But the laws of physical nature, in the 
highest generality, are identified with the moral law. 
The one Eternal Law embraces all the laws of 
creation. It has a physical and a moral side. On 
the former it effects, on the latter it obliges, but on 
both sides it is imperative ; and though in moral 
matters it be temporarily defeated by sin, still the 



13? 



OP THE ETERNAL LAW. 



moral behest must in the end be fulfilled as surely as 
the physical behest. The defeat of the law must 
be made good, the sin must be punished. Of the 
Eternal Law working itself out in the form of punish- 
ment, we shall speak presently. 

7. It is important to hold this conception of the 
Eternal Law as embracing physical nature along 
with rational agents. To confine the law, as modern 
writers do, to rational agents alone, is sadly to 
abridge the view of its binding force. The rigid 
application of physical laws is brought home to us 
daily by science and by experience : it is a point 
gained, to come to understand that the moral 
law, being ultimately one with those physical laws, 
is no less absolute and indefeasible, though in a 
different manner, than they. 

It is hard for us to conceive of laws being given to 
senseless things. We cannot ourselves prescribe to 
iron or to sulphur the manner of its action. As 
Bacon says {Novum Organiun, i.. Aphorism 4) : " Man 
can only put natural bodies together or asunder : 
nature does the rest within." That is, man cannot 
make the laws of nature : he can only arrange collo- 
cations of materials so as to avail himself of those 
laws. But God makes the law, issuing His com- 
mand, the warrant without which no creature could 
do an3lhing, that every creature, rational and 
irrational, shall act each according to its kind or 
nature. Such is the Eternal Law. 

Readings. — Suarez, De Legibiis, L, xii. ; St. Thos., 
la 2dd, q. 90, art. 2 — 4 ; ib., q. 91, art. i, in corp., ad i ; 
fV;., q. 93, art. I, in corp. ; ib., q. 93, art. 4, in corp. ; 



ORIGIN OF PRIMARY MORAL JUDGMENTS. 133 



ib..q. 93, art. 5, in corp. ; ib., q, 93, art. 6, in corp. ; 
Suarez, De Legibus, II., vi.; Cicero, De LegibuSf II., 
iv. ; id., De Republica, in. 22. 



CHAPTER Vni. 

OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 

Section I. — Of the Origin of Primary Moral Judgmenis. 

I. It is an axiom of the schools, that whatever is 
received, is received according to the manner of 
the recipient. We have spoken of the law that 
governs the world, as that law has existed from 
eternity in the mind of God. We have now to con- 
sider that law as it is received in creatures, and 
becomes the inward determinant of their action. 
Action is either necessary or free. The great multi- 
tude of creatures are wholly necessary agents. Even 
in free agents, most of what is in them, and much 
that proceeds from them, is of necessity, and beyond 
the control of their will. Of necessary action, 
whether material or mental, we shall have nothing 
further to say. It is governed by the Eternal Law, 
but it is not matter of moral philosophy. Hence- 
forth we have to do with that law, only as it is 
received in free agents, as such, to be the rule of 
their conduct. The agents being free, the law must 
be received in a manner consonant with their free- 
dom. It is proper to a free and rational being to 
guide itself, not to be dragged or pushed, but to 



134 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



go its own way, yet not arbitrarily, but according 
to law. The law for such a creature must be, not 
a physical determinant of its action, but a law 
operating in the manner of a motive to the will, 
obliging and binding, yet not constraining it : a law 
written in the intellect after the manner of know- 
ledge : a law within the mind and consciousness of 
the creature, whereby it shall measure and regulate 
its own behaviour. This is the natural law of con- 
science. It is the Eternal Law, as made known to 
the rational creature, whereby to measure its own 
free acts. The Eternal Law is in the Mind of God : 
the Natural Law in the minds of men and angels. 
The Eternal Law adjusts all the operations of 
creatures : the Natural Law, only the free acts of 
intellectual creatures. And yet, for binding force, 
the Natural Law is one with the Eternal Law. On 
a summer evening one observes the sunset on the 
west coast ; the heavens are all aglow with the sun 
shining there, and the waters are aglow too, reflect- 
ing the sun's rays. The Eternal Law is as the sun 
there in the heavens, the Natural Law is like the 
reflection in the sea. But it is one light. 

2. It is called the Natural Law, first, because it 
is found, more or less perfectly expressed, in all 
rational beings : now whatever is found in all the 
individuals of a kind, is taken to belong to the specific 
nature, or type of that kind. Again it is called the 
Natural Law, because it is a thing which any rational 
nature must necessarily compass and contain within 
itself in order to arrive at its own proper perfection 
and maturity. Thus this inner law is natural, in 



ORIGIN OF PRIMARY MORAL JUDGMENTS. 135 



the sense in which walldng, speech, civihzation are 
natural to man. A man who has it not, is below the 
standard of his species. It will be seen that dancing, 
singing- -at least to a pitch of professional excellence 
— and a knowledge of Greek, are not, in this sense* 
natural. The Natural Law is not natural, in the 
sense of " coming natural," as provincial people say, 
or coming to be in man quite irrespectively of train- 
ing and education, as comes the power of breathing. 
It was absurd of Paley (Mor. Phil., bk. i., c. v.) to look 
to the wild boy of Hanover, who had grown up in 
the woods by himself, to display in his person either 
the Natural Law or any other attribute proper to a 
rational creature. 

3. We call this the natural law of conscience, 
because every individual's conscience applies this 
law, as he understands it, to his own particular 
human acts, and judges of their morality accordingly. 
What then is conscience ? It is not a faculty, not a 
habit, it is an act. It is a practical judgment of the 
understanding. It is virtually the conclusion of a 
syllogism, the major premiss of which would be some 
general principle of command or counsel in moral 
matters ; the minor, a statement of fact bringing 
some particular case of your own conduct under 
that law ; and the conclusion, which is conscience, 
a decision of the case for 370urself according to that 
principle : e.g., * There is no obligation of going to 
church on (what Catholics call) a day of devotion: 
this day I am novv^ living is only a day of devotion ; 
therefore I am not bound to go to church to-day.' 
Such is the train of thought, not always so explicitly 



136 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



and formally developed, that passes through the 
mind, when conscience works. It is important to 
remember that conscience is an act of intellect, a 
judgment, not on a matter of general principle, not 
about other people's conduct, but about my own 
action in some particular case, and the amount of 
moral praise or blame that I deserve, or should 
deserve, for it. As regards action already done, 
or not done, conscience testifies, accusing or excusing. 
As regards action contemplated, conscience restrains 
or prompts, in the way of either obligation or counsel. 

4. Conscience is not infallible : it may err, like 
any other human judgment. A man may be blind, 
if not exactly to his own action, at least to the 
motives and circumstances of his action. He may 
have got hold of a wrong general principle of con- 
duct. He may be in error as to the application of 
his principle to the actual facts. In all these ways, 
what we may call the conscientious syllogism may be 
at fault, like any other syllogism. It may be a bad 
syllogism, either in logical form, or in the matter of 
fact asserted in the premisses. This is an erroneous 
conscience. But, for action contemplated, even an 
erroneous conscience is an authoritative decision. 
If it points to an obligation, however mistakenly, 
we are bound either to act upon the judgment or get 
it reversed. We must not contradict our own reason : 
such contradiction is moral evil. (c. v., s. iii., n. 3, p. 74,) 
If conscience by mistake sets us free of what is 
objectively our bounden duty, we are not there and 
then bound to that duty: but we may be bound at 
once to get that verdict of conscience overhauled and 



ORIGIN OF PRIMARY MORAL JUDGMENTS. 13? 



reconsidered. Conscience in this case has proceeded 
in ignorance, which ignorance will be either vincible 
or invincible, and must be treated according to the 
rules provided in the matter of ignorance, (c. iii., s. i,, 
nn. 3 — 5, p. 27.) An obligation, neglected in invin- 
cible ignorance, makes a merely material sin, (c. iii., 
s. ii., n. 7, p. 33.) 

5. There is another element of mind, often con- 
founded under one name with conscience, but distinct 
from it, as a habit from an act, and as principles 
from their application. This element the schoolmen 
called synderesis.*' 

Synderesis is an habitual hold upon primary moral 
judgments, as, that we must do good, avoid evil, 
requite benefactors, honour superiors, punish evil- 
doers. There is a hot controversy as to how these 
primary moral judgments arise in the mind. The 
coals of dispute are kindled by the assumption, that 
these moral judgments must needs have a totally 
other origin and birth in the mind than speculative 
first principles, as, that the whole is greater than the 
part, that two and two are four, that things which 
are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. 
The assumption is specious, but unfounded. It looks 
plausible because of this difference, that moral judg- 
ments have emotions to wait upon them, speculative 
judgments have not. Speculative judgments pass 
like the philosophers that write them down, unheeded 
in the quiet of their studies. But moral judgments 

* On the derivation of this word, whether fiom cuvflirtais or 
arvv7i]pr}<ns, see Athenaum, 1877, vol. i., pp. 738, 798, vol. iii. 
pp. 16, 48. 



138 OF THE NATURAL LA IV OF CONSCIENCE. 



are rulers of the commonwealth : they are risen to 
as they go by, with majesty preceding and cares 
coming after. Their presence awakens in us certain 
emotions, conflicts of passion, as we think of the 
good that we should do, but have not done, or of the 
evil that goes unremedied and unatoned for. Com- 
monly a man cannot contemplate his duty, a difficult 
or an unfulfilled duty especially, without a certain 
emotion, very otherwise than as he views the axioms 
of mathem.atics. There is a great difference emo- 
tionally, but intellectually the two sets of principles, 
speculative and moral, are held alike as necessary 
truths, truths that not only are, but must be, and 
cannot be othervv'ise : truths in which the predicate 
of the proposition that states them is contained 
under the suhject. Such are called self-evident pro- 
positions ; and the truths that they express, necessary 
truths. The enquiry into the origin of our primary 
moral judgments is thus merged in the question, how 
we attain to necessary truth. 

6. The question belongs to Psychology, not to 
Ethics : but we will treat it briefly for ethical pur- 
poses. And first for a clear notion of the kind of 
judgments that we are investigating. 

** The primary precepts of the law of nature 
stand to the practical reason as the first principles 
of scientific demonstration do to the speculative 
reason : for both sets of principles are self-evident. 
A thing is said to be self-evident in two ways, either 
in itself, or in reference to us. In itself every proposi- 
tion, the predicate of which can be got from consi- 
deration of the subject is said to be self-evident. But 



ORIGIN OF PRIMARY MORAL JUDGMENTS. 139 



it happens that to one who is ignorant of the defini- 
tion of the subject, such a proposition will not be 
self-evident : as this proposition, Man is a rational 
being, is self-evident in its own nature, because to 
name man is to name something rational ; and yet, 
to one ignorant what man is, this proposition is not 
self-evident. And hence it is that, as Boethius 
says : * there are some axioms self-evident to all 
ahke.' Of this nature are all those propositions 
whose terms are known to all, as. Every whole is 
greater than its part ; and, ThivLgs which are equal to 
the same thing are equal to one another. Some proposi- 
tions again are self-evident only to the wise, who 
understand the meaning of the terms : as, to one 
who understands that an angel is not a body, it is 
self-evident that an angel is not in a place by way of 
circumscription ;* which is not manifest to others, 
who do not understand the term." (St. Thos., la 2ae 
q. 94, art. 2, in corp.) ■ 

One more extract. P^'rom the very nature of 
an intellectual soul it is proper to man that, as soon 
as he knows what a whole is, and what a part is, he 
knows that every whole is greater than its part; and 
so of the rest. But what is a whole, and what a 
part, that he cannot know except through sensory 
impressions. And therefore Aristotle shows that 
the knowledge of principles comes to us through the 
senses." (St. Thos., la 23e, q. 51, art. i, in corp.) 

7. Thus the propositions that right is to he done, 
benefactors to be requited, are self-evident, necessary 

* Circumscriptive, which word is explained by St. Thos., la, 
q. 5a. art. i. 



I4d OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



truths, to any child who has learned by experience 
the meaning of right, of kindness, and of a reUirn oj 
kmdmss. ' Yes, but ' — some one will say — * how 
ever does he get to know what right and wrong are ? 
Surely sensory experience cannot teach him that.' 
We answer, man's thoughts begin in sense, and are 
perfected by reflection. Let us take the idea of 
wrong, the key to all other elementary moral ideas. 
The steps by which a child comes to the fulness of 
the idea of wrong may be these. First, the thing is 
forbidden : then one gets punished for it. Punishment 
and prohibition enter in by eye and ear and other 
senses besides. Then the thing is offensive to those 
we love and revere. Then it is bad for us. Then it 
is shameful, habby, tmfair, unkind, selfish, hateful to God. 
All these points of the idea of wrong are grasped by 
the intellect, beginning with sensory presentations of 
what is seen and felt and heard said. Again with 
the idea of onght. This idea is sometimes said to 
defy analysis. But we have gone about (c. vi.) to 
analyse it into two elements, nature requiring, nature's 
King commanding. The idea of wrong we analysed 
into a breach of this natural requirement, and this 
Divine command or law. Primary moral ideas, then, 
yield to intellectual analysis. They are of this style : 
to be do7te, as I wish to be rational and please God : not 
to be dojie, unless I wish to spoil myself and disobey 
my Maker. But primary moral ideas, compared 
together, make primary moral judgments. Primary 
moral judgments, therefore, ar.'ss in the intellect, 
by the same process as other beliefs arise there 
in matters of necessary truth. 



ORIGIN OF PRIMARY MORAL JUDGMENTS. 141 



8. Thus, applying the principle known as Occham^s 
razor, that entities are not to be multiplied without 
reason," we refuse to ackno\vled^e any Moral Sense, 
distinct from Intellect. We know of no peculiar 
faculty, specially made to receive ideas, pleasures 
and pains in the moral order." (Mackintosh, Ethics, 
p. 206.) Most of all, we emphatically protest against 
any blind power being accredited as the organ of 
morality. We cannot accept for our theory of 
morals, that everything is right which warms the 
breast with a glow of enthusiasm, and all those 
actions wrong, at which emotional people are prone 
to cry out, dreadful, shocking. We cannot accept 
emotions for arbitrators, where it most concerns 
reasonable beings to have what the Apostle calls 
"enlightened eyes of the heart" (Ephes. i. 18), that 
we may " know to refuse the evil and to choose 
the good." (Isaias vii. 15.) A judge may have his 
emotions, but his charge to the jury must be dictated, 
not by his heart, but by his knowledge of the law. 
And the voice of conscience, whatever feelings it may 
stir, must be an intellectual utterance, and, to be 
worth anything in a case of difficulty, a reasoned 
conclusion, based on observation of facts, and appli- 
cation of principles, and consultation with moral 
theologians and casuists. A subjective and emo- 
tional standard of right and wrong is as treacherous 
and untrustworthy as the emotional justification of 
those good people, who come of a sudden to " feel 
converted.." 

g. It would be unnecessary, except for the wrong- 
headedness of philosophers, to observe that con- 



142 OF 7 HE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



science requires educating. As moral virtue is a 
habit of appetite, rational or irrational, a formation 
resulting from frequent acts; and as the child needs 
to be aided and assisted from without towards the 
performance of such acts, in order to overcome the 
frequent resistance of appetite to reason (c. v., s. ii., 
n. 4, p. 71) ; so the springs of conscience are certain 
intellectual habits, whereby the subject is cognisant 
of the principles of natural law, and of their bearing 
on his own conduct, habits which, hke the habits 
of moral virtue, require to be formicd by acts from 
within and succour from without, since merely the 
rudiments of the habit are supplied by nature. Even 
the first principles of morality want formulating and 
pointing out to children, like the axioms of geometry. 
The mother tells her little one : ' Ernest, or Frank, 
be a good boy : ' while the schoolmaster explains to 
]\Iaster Ernest that two straight lines cannot possibly 
enclose a space. There is something in the boy's 
mind that goes along with and bears out both the 
teaching of his master and his mother's exhortation : 
something that says within him : ' To be sure, those 
lines can't enclose a space : ' * Certainly, I ought 
to be good.' It is not merely on authority that he 
accepts these propositions. His own understanding 
welcomes and approves them : so much so, that 
once he has understood them, he would not believe 
the contrary for being told it. You would not per- 
suade a child that it was right to pull mother's 
hair ; or that half an orange was literally, as Hesiod 
says, "more than the whole." He would answer 
that it could not be, that he knew better. 



ORIGIN OF PRIMARY MORAL JUDGMENTS. 143 



10. On one ground there is greater need of educa- 
tion for the conscience than for any other intellectual 
formation : that is because of the power of evil to 
fascinate and blind on practical issues of duty. 
Cicero well puts it : 

We are amazed and perplexed by variety of 
opinions and strife of authorities ; and because there 
is not the same divergence upon matters of sense, 
we fancy that the senses afford natural certainty, 
while, foi moral matters, because some m^en take 
one view, some another, and the same men different 
views at different times, we consider that any settle- 
ment that can be arrived at is merely conventional, 
which is a huge mistake. The fact is, there is no 
parent, nor nurse, nor schoolmaster, nor poet, nor 
stage play, to corrupt the judgm.ents of sense, nor 
consent of the multitude to wTench them away from 
the truth. It is for minds and consciences that 
all the snares are set, as well by the agency of 
those whom I have just mentioned, who take us in 
our tender and inexperienced age, and ingrain and 
fashion us as they will, as also by that counterfeit 
presentment of good, which lurks in the folds of 
every sense, the mother of all evil, pleasure, under 
whose seductive blandishments men fail to recog- 
nise the moral good that nature offers, because it is 
unaccompanied by this itching desire and satisfac- 
tion." (Cicero, De Legibus, i., 17.) 

Readings. — St.Tlios., la, q. 79, art. il — 13 ; Plato, 
Protagoras, 325, 326 ; John Grote, Examination oj 
Utilitarian Philosophy, pp. 169, 207, 208; Cardinal 
Newman, Grammar of Assent, pp. 102 — 112. 



144 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



Section II. — Of the invariability oj Primary Moral 
judgments. 

I. The following narrative is taken from Grote's 
History of Greece, c. 8i. : 

" It was a proud day for the Carthaginian 
general* when he stood as master on the ground of 
Himera ; enabled to fulfil the duty, and satisfy the 
exigencies, of revenge for his slain grandfather. 
Tragical indeed was the consummation of this 
long-cherished purpose. ... All the male captives, 
3,000 in number, were conveyed to the precise spot 
where Hamilkar had been slain, and there put to 
death with indignity, as an expiatory satisfaction 
to his lost honour. No man can read the account 
of this wholesale massacre without horror and 
repugnance. Yet we cannot doubt, that among all 
the acts of Hannibal's life, this was the one in which 
he most gloried ; that it realized in the most com- 
plete and emphatic manner, his concurrent aspirations 
of filial sentiment^ religions obligation, and honour as 
a patriot ;\ that to show mercy would have been 
regarded as a mean dereliction of these esteemed 
impulses. . . . Doubtless, the feelings of Hannibal 
were cordially shared, and the plenitude of his 
revenge envied, by the army around him. So 
different, sometimes so totally contrary, is the tone 
and direction of the moral sentiments, among dif- 
ferent ages and nations." 

* Hannibal, b.c. 409, therefore not the victor of Cannae, 
t Italics mine, 



INVARIABILITY OF PRIMARY MORAL JUDGMENTS. 145 



We may supplement this story by another from 
Herodotus (iii., 38) : 

" Darius, after he had got the kingdom, called 
into his presence certain Greeks who were at hand, 
and asked, *What he should pay them to eat the 
bodies of their fathers when they died.' To which 
they answered, that there was no sum that would 
tempt them to do such a thing. He then sent for 
certain Indians, of the race called Callatians, men 
who eat their fathers, and asked them, while the 
Greeks were standing by, and knew by the aid of an 
interpreter all that was said — ' What he should give 
them to burn the bodies of their fathers, at their 
decease ? ' The Indians exclaimed aloud, and bade 
him forbear such language. Such is the way of 
men ; and Pindar was right in my judgment, when 
he said, * Convention is king over all.' " 

2. If any one held that the natural law of con- 
science was natural in the same way as the sense 
of temperature : if one held to the existence of a 
Moral Sense in all men, settling questions of right 
and wrong, as surely as all men know sweet things 
from bitter by tasting them : these stories, and 
they could be multiplied by hundreds, abundantly 
suffice to confute the error. There is no authentic 
copy of the moral law, printed, framed, and hung 
up by the hand of Nature, in the inner sanctuary of 
every human heart. Man has to learn his duties 
as he learns the principles of health, the laws of 
mechanics, the construction and navigation of vessels, 
the theorems of geometry, or any other art or science. 
And he is just as likely to go wrong, and has gone 



146 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



wrong as grievously, in his judgments on moral 
matters as on any other subject of human know- 
ledge. The knowledge of duties is natural (as 
explained in the previous section, n. 2), not because 
it comes spontaneously, but because it is necessary 
to our nature for the development and perfection of 
the same. Thus a man ought, so far as he can, to 
learn his duties : but we cannot say of a man, as 
such, that he oiiglit to learn geometrj' or navigation. 
If a man does not know his duties, he is excused 
by ignorance, according to the rules under which 
ignorance excuses, (c. iii., s. i., nn. 3 — 5, p. 27.) If 
a man does not know navigation, there is no ques- 
tion of excuse for vvhat he was not bound to learn, 
but he may suffer loss hy his want of knowledge. 

3. It was furthermore observed above (I.e.), that 
the natural law was so called as being found expressed 
more or less perfectly in the minds of all men, and 
therefore being a proper element of human nature. 
It remains to see how much this universal natural 
expression amounts to. That is at once apparent 
from our previous explanation oi synderesis. (s.i., nn. 5, 
seq., p. 139.) Not a complete and accurate know- 
ledge of the natural law is found in all minds, far 
from it ; but syndercsis is found in all. This is 
apparent from Mr. Grote's own phrases, aspira- 
tions of filial sentiment," religious obligation," 
** honour as a patriot," Parents are to he Jwnoiired, 
we must do our duty to God and to our country : there 
Hannibal was at one with the most approved 
teachers of morality. Callatian and Greek agreed 
in the recognition of the commandment, Honour thy 



IMMUTABILITY OF THE NATURAL LAW. 14^ 



father and thy mother. That was the major premiss of 
them both, in the moral syllogism (s. i., n. 3, p. 135), 
which ruled their respective consciences. Their 
difference was upon the applying minors as it is 
called ; the Greek regarding the dissolution of the 
body into its elements by fire, and so saving it from 
corruption, as the best means of honouring the dead : 
the Callatians preferring to raise their parents as it 
were to life again, by making them the food of their 
Hving children. Hannibal, again, had before his 
mind the grand principle of retribution, that wrong- 
doing must be expiated by suffering. But he 
had not heard the words ** Vengeance is Mine ; " 
and mistakenly supposed it to rest with himself to 
appoint and carry out his own measure of revenge. 
Whether he was quite so invincibly ignorant on this 
point, as Grote represents, is open to doubt. At 
any rate he was correct in the primary moral 
judgment on which he proceeded. 

Reading. — St. Thos., la 2se, q. 94, art. 6. 

Section III.-— 0/ the immutability of the Natural Law, 

I. Besides printing, many methods are now in 
vogue for multiplying copies of a document. Com- 
monly the document is written out with special ink 
on special paper; the copy thus used is called a 
stencil ; and from it other copies are struck off. We 
will suppose the stencil to be that page of the Eternal 
Law written in the Mind of God, which regulates 
human acts, technically so called. The copies struck 
off from that stencil will be the Natural Law in the 
mind of this man and of that. Now, as all who are 



148 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



familiar with copying processes know too well, it 
happens at times that a copy comes out very faint, 
and in parts not at all. These faint and partial 
copies represent the Natural Law as it is imperfectly 
developed in the minds of many men. In this sense, 
and as we may say subjectively, the Natural Law is 
mutable, very mutable indeed. Still, as no one would 
say that the document had been altered, because 
some copies of it were bad, so it is not strictly 
correct to say that the Natural Law varies with these 
subjective varieties. Appeal would be made to a full 
and perfectly printed impression of the document, 
one that rendered the stencil exactly. The Natural 
Law must be viewed in like manner, as it would 
exist in a mind perfectly enhghtened concerning 
the whole duty of man, and exactly reproducing 
in itself that portion of the Eternal Law which 
ordains such duty. Were such a mind to discern 
a natural obligation to lie differently at two different 
times, all the relevant circumstances being alike in 
both cases, and the moral solution different, then 
only could the Natural Law be held to have changed. 

2. But this is clearly impossible. The conclusion 
of a geometrical theorem is a truth for all time. 
There is no difference here between a complicated 
theorem, having many conditions, and a simpler 
theorem with fewer. It is indeed easier for a few 
than for many conditions to be all present together: 
but the enunciation of the conclusion supposes all 
the conditions, whatever their number. The same 
in a practical manner, as in the stabilit}^ of a bridge. 
The bridge that would stand in England, would 



IMMUTABILITY OF THE NATURAL LAW. 149 



stand in Ceylon. If it would not, there must have 
occurred some change in the conditions, as the heat 
of the tropical sun upon the girders. A point of 
casuistry also, however knotty, once determined, is 
determined for ever and aye, for the circumstances 
under which it was determined. The Natural Law 
in this sense is absolutely immutable, no less in 
each particular application than in the most general 
principles. We must uniformly pass the same 
judgment on the same case. What is once right 
and reasonable, is always right and reasonable, in 
the same matter. Where to-day there is only one 
right course, there cannot to-morrow be two, unless 
circumstances have altered. The Natural Law is 
thus far immutable, every jot and tittle. 

3. No power in heaven above nor on earth 
beneath can dispense from any portion of the 
Natural Law. For the matter of the negative 
precepts of that law is, as we have seen, some- 
thing bad in itself and repugnant to human nature, 
and accordingly forbidden by God : while the matter 
of the positive precepts is something good and 
necessary to man, commanded by God. If God 
were to take off His command, or prohibition, the 
intrinsic exigency, or intolerableness, of the thing 
to man would still remain, being as inseparable 
from humanity as certain mathematical properties 
from a triangle. Pride is not made for man, nor 
fornication, nor lying, nor polygamy:* human 

* There is a theological difficulty about the polygamy of the 
patriarchs, which will be touched on in Natural Law, c vi., s, ii., 
n. 4, p. 272. 



I50 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



nature would cry out against them, even were the 
Almighty in a particular instance to withdraw His 
prohibition. What would be the use, then, of any 
such withdrawal ? It would not make the evil thing 
good. An evil thing it would still remain, unnatural, 
irrational, and as such, displeasing to God, the 
Supreme Reason. The man would not be free to 
do the thing, even though God did not forbid it. It 
appears, therefore, that the Divine prohibition, and 
similarly the Divine command, which we have proved 
(c. vi., s. ii., nn. lo, ii, p. 121) to be necessarily im- 
posed in matters of natural evil and of naturally 
imperative good, is imposed as a hard and fast line, 
so long as the intrinsic good or evil remains the same. 

4. There is, therefore, no room for Evolution in 
Ethics and Natural Law any more than in Geometry. 
One variety of geometrical construction, or of moral 
action, may succeed another ; but the truths of the 
science, by which those varieties are judged, change 
not. There is indeed this peculiarity about morality, 
distinguishing it from art, that if a man errs in- 
vincibly, the evil that he takes for good is not 
formally evil, or evil as he wills it, and the good that 
he takes for evil is formally evil to him. (c. iii., s. ii., 
n. 7, p. 33.) So there is variation and possible Evolu- 
tion in bare formal good and bare formal evil, as 
ignorance gradually changes into knowledge; and 
likewise Reversion, as knowledge declines into 
ignorance. Even this Evolution and Reversion have 
their limits: they cannot occur in the primary princi- 
ples of morality, as we saw in the last section. But 
morality mater id and objective, — complete morality, 



IMMUTABILITY OF THE NATURAL LAW. 15J 



where the formal and material elements agree, where 
real wrong is seen to be wrong, and real right is 
known for right — in this morality there is no Evolu- 
tion. If Hannibal offered human sacrifices to his 
grandfather because he knew no better, and could 
not have known better, than to think himself 
bound so to do, he is to be excused, and even 
praised for his piety : still it was a mistaken piety ; 
and the act, apart from the light in which the doer 
viewed it, was a hideous crime. An incorrupt teacher 
of morals would have taught the Carthaginian, not 
that he was doing something perfectly right for his 
age and country, which, however, would be wrong 
in Germany some centuries later, but that he was 
doing an act there and then evil and forbidden of 
God, from which he was bound, upon admonition, 
instantly to desist.* 

5. There are Evolution and Reversion in archi- 
tecture, but not in the laws of stability of structure, 
nor in the principles of beauty as realized in build- 
ing. A combination, ugly now, was not beautiful in 
the days of Darius. Tastes differ, but not right 
tastes ; and moral notions, but not right moral 
notions. It is true that questions of right and 
wrong occur in one state of society, that had no 
relevance in an earlier state, the conditions of the 
case not having arisen. But so it is in archi- 
tecture ; there are no arches in the Parthenon. 
The principle of the arch, however, held in the 
age of Pericles, though not applied. 

• The authoi has seen reason somewhat to modify this view, as 
appears by the Appendix. (Note to Third Edition.) 



152 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



6. The progress of Moral Science is the more 
and more perfect development of the Natural Law 
in the heart of man, a psychological, not an onto- 
logical development. And Moral Science does 
progress. No man can be a diligent student of 
morality for years, without coming to the under- 
standing of many things, for which one would look 
in vain in Aristotle's Ethics and Politics, or in Cicero, 
De Officiisj or even in the Summa of St. Thomas, 
or perhaps in any book ever written. New moral 
questions come for discussion as civilization ad- 
vances. The commercial system of modern times 
would furnish a theme for another De Lugo. And 
still on this path of ethical discovery, to quote the 
text that Bacon loved, Many shall pass over, and 
knowledge shall be multiplied." (Daniel xii. 4.) 

Readings. — St. Thos., Supplement, q. 65, art. I, in 
corp. ; ih,, q. 65, art. 2, in corp., and ad i ; Hughes, 
Supernatural Morals, pp. 67, 68, reviewed in The 
Month for August, 1891, pp. 542, 543. 




Section IV. — Of Prohahilism, 

1, Sometimes conscience returns a clear, positive 
answer as to the morality of an act contemplated. 
True or false the answer may be, but the ring of it 
has no uncertain sound. At other times conscience 
is perplexed, and her answer is, perhaps, and perhaps 
not. When the woman hid Achimaas and Jonathan 
in the well, and said to Absalom's servants, "They 
passed on in haste " (2 Kings xvii. 17 — 21), did she 
do right in speaking thus to save their lives? A 



OF PROBABILISM. 



'53 



point that has perplexed consciences for centuries, 
A. man's hesitation is sometimes subjective and 
peculiar to himself. It turns on a matter of fact, 
which others know full well, though he doubts ; or 
on a point of law, dark to him, but clearly ruled by 
the consent of the learned. In such cases it is his 
duty to seek information from people about him, 
taking so much trouble to procure it as the import- 
ance of the matter warrants, not consulting ten 
doctors as to the ownership of one hen. But it 
may be that all due enquiries fail. The fact remains 
obscure ; or about the law, doctors differ, and argu- 
ments conflict indecisively. What is the man to do ? 
Take the safe course : suppose there is an obligation, 
and act accordingly ? This principle, put as a com- 
mand, would make human life intolerable. It is, 
moreover, false, when so put, as we shall presently 
prove. Take the easy course, and leave the obliga- 
tion out of count ? This principle is more nearly 
correct than the other : but it needs interpretation, 
else it may prove dangerously lax. 

2. To return to Achimaas and Jonathan and 
their hostess. Some such reckoning as this may 
have passed through her mind : * Lying lips are 
an abomination to the Lord : but is it a lie to put 
murderers off the scent of blood ? ' To that ques- 
tion finding no answer, she may have made up her 
mind in this way : ' Well, I don't know, but I'll 
risk it.' If that were her procedure, she did not 
walk by the scientific lines of Probabilism. The 
probabilist runs no risk, enters upon no uncertainty, 
and yet he by no means always follows what is 



154 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



technically termed the safe course, that is, the 
course which supposes the obligation, e.g., in the 
case in point, to have said simply where the men 
were. How then does the probabilist contrive to 
extract certainty out of a case of insoluble doubt ? 
By aid of what is called a reflex principle. A reflex 
is opposed to a direct principle. A direct principle 
lays down an obligation, as it would bind one who 
had a perfect discernment of the law and of the 
facts of the case, and of the application of the one 
to the other, and who was perfectly able to keep the 
law. By a reflex principle, a man judges of his own 
act, taking account of the imperfection of his know- 
ledge and the limitations of his power. Probabilism 
steps in, only where a case is practically insoluble to 
an agent upon direct principles. The probabilist 
thereupon leaves the direct speculative doubt un- 
solved. He relinquishes the attempt of determining 
what a man should do in the case in question, who 
had a thorough insight into the lie of the law. He 
leaves that aside, and considers what is his duty, 
or not his duty, in the deficiency of his knowledge. 
Then he strikes upon the principle, which is the root 
of Probabilism, that a doubtful law has no binding 
power. It will be observed that this is a reflex 
principle. For objectively nothing is doubtful, but 
everything is or is not in point of fact. To a mind 
that had a full grasp of the objective order of things, 
there would be no doubtful law : such a mind would 
discern the law in every case as holding or not hold- 
ing. But no human mind is so perfect. Every man 
has to take account of his own limitations of vision 



OF PROBABILISM. 



155 



in judging of his duty. The question for me is, not 
the law absolutely, but the law as far as I can make 
it out. Our proposition, then, states that when an 
individual, using such moral dihgence of enquiry as 
the gravity of the matter calls for, still remains in a 
state of honest doubt as to whether the law binds, 
in that mental condition it does not bind him. 

3. What the law does not forbid, it leaves open. 
Aristotle indeed {Eth., V., xi., i) says the contrary, 
that what the law does not command (he instances 
suicide), it forbids. All that he seems to mean is, 
that if there be an act which at times might appear 
advantageous, and yet is never commanded, there 
is a presumption of the legislator being averse to 
that act. Again, there are special occasions, in view 
of which the legislator undertakes to regulate the 
whole outward conduct of a man by positive 
enactment, as with a soldier on parade : what is 
not there commanded, is forbidden. But these 
instances do not derogate from our general propo- 
sition, which is proved in this way. The office of 
law is not to loose, but to bind. It declares, not 
what the subject may do, but what he must or must 
not. It does not bring liberty, but restriction. 
Therefore, if any one wishes to assert a restriction, 
he must go to a law to prove it. If he can find 
none, hberty remains. The law is laid on liberty. 
Liberty is not the outcome of law, but prior to it. 
Liberty is in possession. The bi^rden of proof rests 
with those who would abridge liberty and impose an 
obligation. It is an axiom of law itself, a natural, 
not an arbitrary axiom, that better is the condition oj 



156 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



the possessor : which amounts in this matter to 
another statement, also axiomatic, that a law binds 
not till it is promulgated. But a law of which I have 
serious outstanding doubts whether it exists at 
all, or, if existent, whether it reaches my case, 
is for this occasion a law not duly promulgated 
to me. Therefore it binds me not, and my liberty 
remains. 

4. It remains to consider what constitutes a 
serious outstanding doubt. The word outstanding has 
been already explained. It means that we have 
sought for certain information, and cannot procure 
it. Now what is a serious doubt ? It is a doubt 
founded on a positive opinion against the existence 
of the law, or its applicability to the case in point, 
an opinion fraught with probability, solid, comparative^ 
practical probability. The doubt must not be mere 
negative doubt, or ignorance that cannot tell why 
it doubts; not a vague suspicion, or sentimental 
impression that defies all intellectual analysis ; not 
a mere subjective inability to make up one's mind, 
but some counter-reason that admits of positive 
statement, as we say, in black and white. It is true 
that many minds cannot define their grounds of 
doubt, even when these are real. Such minds are 
unfit to apply the doctrine of Probabilism to them- 
selves, but must seek its application from others. 
The opinion against the law, when explicitly drawn 
out, must be found to possess a solid probability. 
'It may be either an intrinsic argument from reason 
and the nature of the case, or an extrinsic argument 
from the word of some authority : but the reason or 



OF PkOBABILISM. 



157 



the authority must be grave. The opinion is thus 
said to be intrinsically or extrimically probable. The 
probability must also be comparative. There is many 
an argument, in itself a very good one, that perishes 
when we come to consider the crushing weight of 
evidence on the other side. An opinion is compara- 
tively probable, when after hearing all the reasons 
and all the authorities on the other side, the said 
opinion still remains not unlikely, which is all that 
we mean to say of an opinion here, when we call it 
probable. In ordinary English, the word probable 
means more likely than otherwise, which is not the 
signification of the Latin opinio probabilis. Lastly, 
the probability must be practical : it must take 
account of all the circumstances of the case. 
Practical probability is opposed to speculative, which 
leaves out of count certain circumstances, which are 
pretty sure to be present, and to make all the 
difference in the issue. Thus it is speculatively 
probable that a Catholic might without sin remain 
years without confession, never having any grievous 
sins to confess, grievous sin alone being necessary 
matter for that sacrament. There is no downright 
cogent reason why a man might not do so. And 
yet, if he neglected such ordinary means of grace as 
confession of venial sin, having it within reach, 
month after month, no one, considering the sin 
which surrounds us," would expect that man to go 
without grievous scathe. In mechanics, there are 
many machines that work prettily enough in specu- 
lation and on paper, where the inventors do not 
consider the difficulties of imperfect material, careless 



158 OF THE NATURAL LAW OF CONSCIENCE. 



handling, climate, and other influences, that render 
the invention of no practical avail. 

5. The safest use of Probabilism is in the field 
of property transactions and of positive law. There 
is greatest risk of using it amiss in remaining in a 
false religion. All turns upon the varying amount 
of trouble involved in moral diligence of enquiry, 
according as the matter at issue is a point of mere 
observance or of vital interest. 

6. The point on which the probability turns 
must be the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the action, 
not any other issue, as that of the physical conse- 
quences. Before rolling boulder-stones down a hill 
to amuse myself, it is not enough to have formed 
a probable opinion that there is no one comnng up. 
That would be Probabilism misapplied. The correct 
enquiry is : Does any intrinsic reason or extrinsic 
authority m.ake the opinion probable, that it is 
lawful for mere amusement to roll down rocks with 
any belief short of certainty that no one will be 
crushed thereby? The probability, thus turned on 
to the lawfulness of the action, breaks down alto- 
gether. This explanation, borne in mind, will save 
much misapprehension. 



CHAPTER IX. 



OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 

Section I. — Of a Twofold Sanction^ Natural and Divine, 

I. The sanction of a law is the punishment foi 
breaking it. The punishment for final, persistent 
breach of the natural law is failure to attain the 
perfect state and last end of the human soul, which 
is happiness. If existence be prolonged under this 
failure, it must be in the contrary state of misery, 
This failure and misery is at once a natural result 
and a divine infliction. It is the natural result of 
repeated flagrant acts of moral evil, whereby a man 
has made his nature hideous, corrupted and over- 
thrown it. (c. vi,, s. i., nn. 4, 5, p. iii.) For an end is 
gained by taking the means, and lost by neglect of the 
means thereto. Now, as we have seen, happiness is 
an intellectual act, the perfection of an intellectual or 
rational nature (c. ii., s. ii., p. 6) ; and the means to it 
are living rationally : for a reasonable being, to do 
well and fare well, must live by that reason, which is 
the form of his being, (c. vi., s. i., n. 4, p. iii.) Who- 
ever therefore goes about contradicting the reason 
that is within him (c. v., s. iii., n. 3, p. 74) is not 
in the way to attain to happiness. Happiness 



l6o OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 



the end of man, the creature of all others the most 
complex, is not to be stumbled upon by chance. 
You may make two stones lean upright one against 
the other by chance, but otherwise than by a 
methodical application of means to the end you 
could not support the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. 

2. Man's is a progressive nature (c. vi., s. i., nn. 
2, 3, p. log), himself being the director of his own pro- 
gress. Other progressive natures may be spoilt by 
their requirements being denied, and contrary things 
done to them. Man has his requirements. It 
depends mainly on himself whether he acts up to 
them or against them. If he acts against them, he 
so far spoils himself; and once he is thoroughly 
spoilt by his own doing, the final perfection of 
humanity is gone from him for ever. It is the 
natural result. 

3. I have spoken (n. i) of repeated flagrant acts: 
not that I would ignore the evil set of the will that 
results from one gross and deliberate evil deed (see c. 
ix., s. ii., n. 6, p. 168) : but because the case is clearer 
where the acts have been multiplied. However we 
must not omit to observe, that it is not any vice, or 
evil habit, that formally unfits a man for his final 
happiness, but an actual evil set of the will, coming 
of actual sin unrepented of, which set is more 
decided, when that uncancelled sin is the last ol 
many such, and the outcome of a habit. But 
supposing an habitual sinner to have repented, and 
his repentance to have been ratified by God, and 
that he dies, not actually in sin, but before the habit 
of sin has been eradicated (c. v., s. ii., n. i, p. 6g), — we 



TWOFOLD SANCTION, NATURAL AND DIVINE. i6i 



may say of him, that his " foot is set in the right 
way," that is, his will is actually right, and the 
obstacle to happiness is removed. The evil habit in 
him is not an actual adhesion of his will to evil, but 
a proneness to relapse into that state. It is only 
remotely and potentially evil. It is a seed of evil, 
which however will not germinate in the good and 
blissful surroundings to which the soul has been 
transplanted, but remain for ever sterile, or rather, 
will speedily decay. 

4. If we leave God out of morality, and take 
account only of the philosophical aspect of sin (c. vi., 
s. ii., n. 6, p. 119), we have nothing further to say of 
the sanction than this, which has been said : ' Act 
against nature, and you will end by ruining your 
nature, and fail of your final perfection and happi- 
ness.' But now God comes in, the giver of the law 
of nature ; and the failure, already a natural result, 
must henceforth be viewed also as a Divine chastise- 
ment. There is no law without a sanction. There 
is no law, the giver of which can allow it to be 
broken with impunity. A legislator who dispensed 
with all sanction, would rightly be taken by young 
and old not to be in earnest in his command. If 
then God must give a law to man whom He has 
created (c. vi., s. ii., n. g, p. 120), He must attach a 
sanction to that law ; and if the law is according to 
the exigency of human nature (c. vi., s. ii.n. 11, p. 122), 
so will the sanction also be the natural outcome 
of that exigency set at naught and that law broken. 

5. Our position gains by the consideration, that 
the object, in the contemplation of which man's soul 

L 



i62 OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 



is to be finally and perfectly blessed in the natural 
order, is the Creator seen through the veils of His 
works, (c. ii., s. iv., p. 21.) This mediate vision of God, 
albeit it is to be the work of a future existence, needs 
practice and preparation in this life. God will not be 
discerned by the man who has not been accustomed 
to look for Him. He will not be seen by the swine, 
who with head to earth has eaten his fill of sensual 
pleasures, and has cared for nothing better. He 
will not be seen by the covetous man and the 
oppressor, who never identified His image hidden 
away under the labour-stained dress of the poor. 
He will not be seen by the man, who never 
looked up into His face in prayer here below. He 
will not be seen by the earth-laden spirit, that cared 
nothing at all for God, that hated the mention of 
His name, that proclaimed Him, or at least wished 
Him, not to be at all. 

6. It will be said that this argumentation sup- 
poses the habits of vice, contracted on earth, to 
remain in the soul after departure : but there is no 
proof of that ; nay of some vices — those that have 
more to do with the body, as drunkenness — the 
habits cannot possibly remain, seeing that the 
appetite v/herein they were resident has perished 
with the body. First, as regards the instance cited, 
I reply that we may consider drunkenness in two 
ways, on the one hand as a turning to the creature, 
on the other as a turning away from reason and the 
Creator. The craving for liquor cannot remain in 
the soul after death exactly as it was before, though 
it probably continues in some analogous form, as 



TWOFOLD SANCTION, NATURAL AND DIVINE. 163 



a thirst fci wild and irregular excitement : but the 
loathing and horror of the ways of reason and of 
God, engendered by frequent voluntary intoxication, 
still continues in the soul. And from this observa- 
tion w^e draw the general answer, that whereas in 
every sin, whether sensual or spiritual, the most 
important part is played by the will, and the will is 
a spiritual, not an organic faculty, a faculty which is 
•a main element of the soul whether in or out of the 
body, — therefore the evil bent and inclination of 
the will, which sin involves, must remain even in 
the departed spirit. Lastly, we may ask : To what 
purpose is our free-will given us, if all souls, good 
and bad alike, users and abusers of the liberty they 
had on earth, enter into their long home all of one 
uniform and spotless hue ? 

7. Thus then it comes to be, by order of nature 
and good consequence, that the man who has aban- 
doned God, goes without God ; and he who has 
shunned his last end and final good, arrives not 
unto it ; and he who would not go, when invited, 
to the feast, eats not of the same : and whoso has 
withdrawn from God, from him God withdraws. 
" A curse he loved, and it shall come upon him ; 
and he would not have a blessing, and it shall be 
far from him. He put on the curse like a garment, 
and it has gone in like water into his entrails, and 
like oil into his bones, — -like a garment which 
covereth him, and like a girdle wherewith he is 
girded continually." (Psalm cviii. 18, ig.) 

8. Conversely, we might argue the final happi- 
ness which attaches to the observance of the law of 
nature, (c. ii., s. v., p. 26.) 



i64 OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 



Readings. — St. Thos., Cont. Ge7it., iii., cc. 140, 
141, 143, 145. 

Section. II. — Of the Finality of the aforesaid Sanction. 

I. By a final, as distinguished from an eternal 
state, is here meant the last state of existence in 
a creature, whether that state go on for ever, in 
which case it is final and eternal, or whether it 
terminate in the cessation of that creature's beingj 
which is a case of a state final, but not eternal. 
Whether the unhappy souls of men, who have 
incurred the last sentence of the natural law, shall 
exist for eternity, is not a question for philosophy to 
decide with certainty. The philosopher rules every- 
thing a priori, showing what must be, if something 
else is. Of the action of God in the world, he can 
only foretell that amount which is thus hypothetically 
necessary. Some divine action there is, of which 
the congruity only, not the necessity, is apparent to 
human eyes : there the philosopher can tell with 
probability, but not with certainty, what God will 
do. Other actions of God are wholly beyond our 
estimate of the reasons of them : we call them 
simply and entirely free. In that sphere philosophy 
has no information to render of her own ; she must 
wait to hear from revelation what God has done, 
or means to do. Philosophers have given reasons of 
congruence, as they call them, for the reprobate 
sinner not being annihilated, and therefore for his 
final punishment being eternal. Those reasons go 
to evince the probability of eternal punishment, 
a probability which is deepened into certainty by 



FINALITY OF AFORESAID SANCTION. 165 



revelation. We shall not enter into them here, but 
shall be content to argue that a term is set to the 
career of the transgressor, arrived at which he must 
leave hope behind of ever winning his way to happi- 
ness, or ever leading any other existence than one 
of misery. 

2. The previous question has shown that some 
punishment must attend upon violation of the 
natural law. Suppose a trangressor has suffered 
accordingly for a certain time after death, what 
shall be done with him in the end ? If he does not 
continue to suffer as long as he continues to be, 
then one of three things : he must either pass into 
happiness, or into a new state of probation, or his 
very punishment must be a probation, wherein if he 
behaves well, he shall be rewarded with happiness 
at last, or if ill, he shall continue in misery until he 
amend. All this speculation, be it understood, lies 
apart from revelation. If then the sufferer passed 
out of this world, substantially and in the main 
a good man, it is not unreasonable that, after a 
period of expiatory suffering for minor delinquencies, 
he should reach that happiness which is the just 
reward of his substantial righteousness. But what 
of him who closed his career in wickedness exceed- 
ing great ? Mere suffering will never make of him a 
good man, or a fit subject for happiness. But the 
suffering may be probationary, and he may amend 
himself under the trial. Against that hypothesis* 
philosophers have brought a priori arguments to show 
that the period of probation must end with the separa- 
tion of the soul from the body. But waiving all such 



i66 OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 



arguments, let us suppose that there might be proba- 
tion after probation even in the world to come. But 
some human souls would continue obstinately and 
unrepentingly set in wickedness, age after age, and 
probation after probation : for the possible malice 
of the will is vastly great. What is to become of 
such obstinate characters? It seems against the 
idea of probation, that periods of trial should 
succeed one another in an endless series. It would 
be a reasonable rule in a university, that an under- 
graduate who had been plucked twenty-five times, 
should become ineligible for his degree. Coming 
after so many failures, neither would the degree be 
any ornament to him, nor he to the university. A 
soul cannot look for seasons without end of possible 
grace and pardon to shine upon it. The series of 
probations must end somewhere. And then ? We 
are come round to where we began. When all the 
probation is over, the soul is found either in con- 
formity with the natural law, which means ultimate 
happiness, or at variance with the law, and becomes 
miserable with a misery that shall never terminate, 
unless the soul itself ceases to be. 

3. It may be asked, how much conformity to the 
natural law is requisite and sufficient, to exempt a 
person at the end of his trial from a final doom of 
misery, or to ensure his lasting happiness ? The 
question resolves itself into three : — how do sins 
differ in point of gravity ? is grave sin ever for- 
given ? is the final award to be given upon the 
person's whole life, a balance being struck between 
his good and evil deeds, or is it to be simply upon 



FINALITY OF AFORESAID SANCTION. 167 



his moral state at the last moment of his career of 
trial? 

4. It was a paradox of the Stoics, that all 
offences are equal, the treading down of your neigh- 
bour's cabbage as heinous a crime as sacrilege. 
(Horace, Satires, i., 3, 115 — 119.) But it is obvious 
that there is a vast difference, as well objectively 
in the matter of the offence, e.g., in the instance 
just quoted from Horace, as also subjectively in the 
degree of knowledge, advertence, and will, where- 
with the offender threw himself into the sin. Thus 
offences come to be distinguished as grave and light: 
the latter being such as with a human master would 
involve a reprimand, the former, instant dismissal. 
Final misery is not incurred except by grave 
offending. 

5. The second question, whether grave sin is 
ever forgiven, cannot be answered by philosophy. 
Of course the sinner may see by the light of reason 
his folly and his error, and thereby conceive some 
sort of sorrow for it, and retract, and to some 
extent withdraw his will from it on natural grounds. 
This amendment of sin on its moral and philo- 
sophical side may deserve and earn pardon at 
human hands. But the offence against God remains 
to be reckoned for with God. Now God is not 
bound to forgive without receiving satisfaction ; and 
He never can receive due satisfaction from man 
for the contempt that a deliberate, grave, and 
flagrant violation of the moral law puts upon the 
Infinite Majesty of the Lawgiver. The first thing 
that revelation has to teach us is whether, and 



i68 OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 



on what terms, God is ready to pardon grievous 
sin. 

6. The balance between deeds good and evil is 
not struck merely at the instant of death. It is 
being struck continually; and man's final destiny 
turns on how that balance stands at the close of his 
time of probation. So long as he keeps the sub- 
stance of the moral law, the balance is in his favour. 
But one downright wilful and grievous transgression 
outweighs with God all his former good deeds. It 
is a defiance of the Deity, a greater insult than all 
his previous life was a service and homage. It is as 
though a loyal regiment had mutinied, or a hitherto 
decent and orderly citizen were taken red-handed 
in murder. If however God deigns to draw the 
offender to repentance, and to pardon him, the 
balance is restored. Thus everything finally depends 
on man being free from guilt of grievous trans- 
gression at the instant of death, or at the end of his 
period of probation, whenever and wherever that 
end may come. 

Reading. — Lessius, De perfectionibus divinis, 1. xiii., 
c. xxvi., nn. 183, seq. 

Section III. — Of Punishment Retrospective and Retributive, 

I. The doctrine of the last section might stand 
even in the mind of one who held that all punish- 
ment is probational, and destined for the amend- 
ment of him who undergoes it, to humble him, to 
awaken his sense of guilt, and to make him fear to 
transgress again. On this theory of punishment, 
the man who in his last probational suffering refuses 



PUNISHMENT RETROSPECTIVE AND RETRIBUTIVE. 169 



to amend, must be let drop out of existence as in- 
corrigible, and so clearly his final state is one of 
misery. The theory is not inconsistent with final 
punishment, but with eternal punishment, unless in- 
deed we can suppose a creature for all eternity to 
refuse, and that under stress of torment, a standing 
invitation to repentance. It is however a peculiar 
theory, and opposite to the common tradition of 
mankind, which has ever been to put gross offenders 
to death, not as incorrigible, not simply as refuse to 
be got rid of, but that their fate may be a deterrent 
to others. Punishment, in this view, is medicinal 
to the individual, and deterrent to the community. 
Eternal punishment has been defended on the score 
of its deterrent force. Both these functions of 
punishment, the medicinal and the deterrent function, 
are prospective. But there is asserted a third func- 
tion, which is retrospective : punishment is said to 
be retributive. It is on this ground that the justifica- 
tion of eternal punishment mainly rests. We are 
however here concerned, not with that eternity, but 
in an endeavour to give a full and adequate view of 
punishment in all its functions. 

2, If punishment is never retributive, the human 
race in all countries and ages has been the sport of 
a strange illusion. Everyone knows what vengeance 
means. It is a desire to punish some one, or to see 
him punished, not prospectively and with an eye to 
the future, for his improvement, or as a warning to 
others, but retrospectively and looking to the past, 
that he may suffer for what he has done. Is then 
the idea of vengeance nothing but an unclean 



l^o OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 



phantom ? Is there no such thing as vengeance to 
a right-minded man ? Then is there an evil element, 
an element essentially and positively evil, in human 
nature. No one v^ill deny that the idea, and to 
some extent the desire, of vengeance, of retaliation, 
of retrospective infliction of suffering in retribution 
for evil done, of what we learn to call in the nursery 
tit for tat, is natural to mankind. It is found in all 
men. We all respond to the sentiment : 

Mighty Fates, by Heaven's decree accomplish, 

According as right passes from this side to that. 

For hateful speech let speech of hate be paid back : 

Justice exacting her due cries this aloud : 

For murderous blow dealt let the murderer pay 

By stroke of murder felt. 

Do and it shall be done unto thee : 

Old is this saying and old and old again. ^ 

Nor must we be led away by Mill {Utilitarianism, 
c. v.) into confounding retaliation, or vengeance, 
with self-defence. Self-defence is a natural idea 
also, but not the same as retaliation. We defend 
ourselves against a mad dog, we do not retaliate on 
him. Hence we must not argue that, because self- 
defence is prospective, therefore so is vengeance. 

3. A thing is essentially evil, when there is no 
possible use of it which is not an abuse. Not far 
different is the conception of a thing positively evil, 
evil, that is, not by reason of any deficiency, or by 
what it is not, but evil by what it is in itself. Such an 

1 iEschylus, ChoephoH, 316, seq. These lines embody the idea on 
which the dramas of the Shakespeare of Greece are principally 
founded. But when was a work of the highest art based upon ar 
idea unsound, irrational and vicious ? 



PUNISHMENT RETROSPECTIVE AND RETRIBUTIVE. 171 



essential, positive evil in human nature would venge- 
ance be, a natural thing for which there was no natural 
use, unless punishment may in some measure be 
retributive. We cannot admit such a flaw in nature. 
All healthy philosophy goes on the principle, that 
what is natural is so far forth good. Otherwise 
we lapse into Manicheism, pessimism, scepticism, 
abysses beyond the reach of argument. Vengeance 
undoubtedly prompts to many crimes, but so does 
the passion of love. Both are natural impulses. 
It would scarcely be an exaggeration to set down 
one third of human transgressions to love, and 
another third to revenge : yet it is the abuse in each 
case, not the use, that leads to sin. If the matri- 
monial union were wicked and detestable, as the 
Manicheans taught, then would the passion of love 
be an abomination connatural to man. Such another 
enormity would be the affection of vengeance, if 
punishment could never rightly be retributive. 

4. Aristotle, Rhetoric, I., x., 17, distinguishes two 
functions of punishment thus : Chastisement is 
for the benefit of him that suffers it, but vengeance 
is for him that wreaks it, that he may have satisfac- 
tion." Add to this the warning given to the com- 
monwealth by the example that is made of the 
offender, and we have the three functions of punish- 
m.ent, medicinal, deterrent, and retributive. As it is 
medicinal, it serves the offender : as it is deterrent, it 
serves the commonwealth : as it is retributive, it serves 
the offended party, being a reparation offered to him. 
Now, who is the offended party in any evil deed ? 
So far as it is a sin against justice, an infringement 



172 OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 



of any man's right, he is the offended party. He is 
offended, however, not simply and precisely by your 
violation of the moral law, but by your having, in 
violation of that law, taken away something that 
belonged to him. Consequently, when you make 
restitution and give him back what you took away, 
with compensation for the temporal deprival of it, 
he is satisfied, and the offence against him is re- 
paired. If you have maliciously burnt his house 
down, you bring him the price of the house and 
furniture, together with further payment for the 
fright and for the inconvenience of being, for the 
present, houseless. You may do all that, and yet 
the moral guilt of the conflagration may remain 
upon your soul. But that is no affair of his : he is 
not the custodian of the moral law : he is not 
offended by your sin, formally viewed as sin: nor has 
he any function of punishing you, taking vengeance 
upon you, or exacting from you retribution for that. 
But what if his wife and children have perished, 
and you meant them so to perish, in the fire ? Your 
debt of restitution still lies in the matter which you 
took away. Of course it is a debt that cannot be 
paid. You cannot give back his " pretty chickens 
and their dam " whole and alive again. Still your 
inability to pay one debt does not make you liable 
to that creditor for another debt, which is part of a 
wholly different account. He is not offended by, 
nor are you answerable to him for, your sin in this 
case any more than in the former. 

5. We may do an injiLvy to an individual, commit 
a crime against the State, and si7i against God. The 



PUNISHMENT RETROSPECTIVE AND RETRIBUTIVE, 



injury to the individual is repaired by restitution, 
not by punishment, and therefore not by vengeance, 
w^hich is a function of punishment. There is no 
such thing as vengeance for a private v^^rong, and 
therefore we have the precept to forgive our enemies, 
and not to avenge ourselves, in v^^hich phrase the 
emphasis falls on the word ourselves. The clear 
idea and strong desire of vengeance, which nature 
affords, shows that there is such a thing as venge- 
ance to be taken by some one : it does not warrant 
every form of vengeance, or allow it to be taken by 
each man for himself. It consecrates the principle 
of retribution, not every application of the principle. 
It is a point of syiideresis, not of particular conduct. 
The reader should recall what was said of the ven- 
geance of Hannibal at Himera. (c. viii., s. ii., p. 144.) 

6. It belongs to the State to punish political sin, 
or crime, and to God to punish theological sin, which 
is sin properly so called, a breach of the Eternal 
Law. The man who has burnt his neighbour's 
house down, though he has compensated the indi- 
vidual owner, may yet be punished by the State. 
The owner, acting in his capacity as citizen, even 
when he has been compensated as an individual, 
may still hand him over to the State for punishment. 
The arson was a violation, not only of commutative, 
but of legal ]\i?>iice (c. v., s. ix., nn. 3, 6, pp. 103, 106), a 
disturbance of the public peace and social order, an 
outrage upon the majesty of the law. For this he may 
be punished by the State, which is the guardian of all 
these things, and which has jurisdiction over him 
to make laws for him, and to enforce their sanction 



174 T^IiP SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 

against him. Civil punishment, besides being deter- 
rent, is retributive for the breach of social order. It 
is the vengea ice of the commonwealth upon the 
disturber of the public peace. Whether the State can 
punish on pure grounds of retribution, away from all 
hope or need of deterring possible imitators of the 
crime, is a question irrelevant to our present enquiry. 
Probably a negative answer should be returned. 

7. We come now to the punishment of sin by 
God, the Living Reasonableness, the Head of the 
Commonwealth of Creation, the Legislator of the 
Eternal Law, the Fountain of all Jurisdiction, Him 
in whose hands rests the plenitude of the pov/er to 
punish. An evil deed may be no wrong to any indi- 
vidual man, no crime against the State, but it must 
ever be an offence against God. It is a departure 
from the order of man's progress as a reasonable 
being (c. v., s. iii., n. 3, p. 74: c. vi., s. i., nn. i — 5, 
p. 109), which is founded on the nature of God 
Himself (c. vi., s. i., n. 7, p. 113), of which order 
God is the official guardian (c. vi., s. ii., nn. 8 — 10, 
p. iig), and which is enjoined by God's Eternal 
Law. (c. vii., n. 3, p. 129.) This law extends to all 
creation, rational and irrational, animate and inani- 
mate. It bids every creature work according to his 
or its own nature and circumstances. Given to irra- 
tional beings, the law is simply irresistible and 
unfailing: such are the ph3^sical laws of nature, so 
many various emanations of the one Eternal Law. 
Given to rational creatures, the law may be resisted 
and broken : sin is the one thing in he universe that 
does break it. (c. vii., nn. 5 — 7, p. 130.) A man may act 



PUNISHMENT RETROSPECTIVE AND RETRIBUTIVE. 173 



in disregard of the Eternal Law on one or other of 
its physical sides, and so much the worse for him, 
though he has not broken the law% but merely ignored 
its operation, as when one eats what is unwholesome. 
Much more shall he suffer for having broken the 
law, in the only possible way that it can be 
broken, by sin. This peculiar violation draws after 
it a peculiar consequence of suffering, penal and 
retributive. If a man gets typhoid fever in his house, 
we sometimes say it is a pimishment on him for 
neglecting his drains, even when the neglect was a 
mere piece of ignorance or inadvertence. It is an 
evil consequence certainly, — the law, which he 
thought not of, working itself out in the form of 
disease. But it is not properly punishment : no 
natural law has been really broken : there has been 
no guilt, and the suffering is not retributive and 
compensatory. It does not go to restore the balance 
of the neglect. It is a lamentable consequence, not 
a repayment. As, when man wrongs his fellow-man, 
he makes with him an involuntary contract (c. v., s. ix., 
n. 6, p. 106), to restore what he takes away: so in 
sinning against God, man makes another involuntary 
contract, to pay back in suffering against his will 
what he unduly takes in doing his own will against 
the will of the Legislator. As St. Augustine says of 
Judas (Serm. 125, n. 5) : He did what he Hked, 
but he suffered what he liked not. In his doing 
what he liked, his sin is found : in his suffering 
what he liked not, God's ordinance is praised." 
Thus it is impossible for the Eternal Law, which 



176 OF THE SANCTION OF THE NATURAL LAW. 



bears down all so irresistibly in irrational nature, 
finally to fail of its effect even upon the most 
headstrong and contumacious of rational creatures ; 
but, as St. Thomas says (la 23e, q. 93, art. 6, 
in corp.), " The defect of doing is made up by 
suffering, inasmuch as they suffer what the Eternal 
Law prescribes for them to the extent to which they 
fail to do what accords with the Eternal Law." 
And St. Anselm {Cur Dens homo, nn. 14, 15) : " God 
cannot possibly lose His honour : for either the 
sinner spontaneously pays what he owes, or God 
exacts it of him against his will. Thus if a man 
chooses to fly from under the will of God com- 
manding, he falls under the same will punishing." 
Punishment is called by Hegel, "the other half of 
sin." Lastly, they are God's own spoken words 
(Deut. xxxii. 35) : " Vengeance is Mine, I will repay." 

Readings. — St. Thos., Conf, Gent., iii. 140, n. 5, 
AmpHus; ib., iii., 144, nn. 8, Per hoc, and 9, Est 
autem. 

For Plato's views on punishment see Protag. 324 
A, B ; Gorgias, 525 ; Rep. 380 b, 615 ; Phacdo, 113 E ; 
Laws, 854 D ; 862 d, e ; 934 A ; 957 e. Plato 
recognizes only the medicinal and the deterrent func- 
tions of punishment, and ignores the retributive. This 
is not to be wondered at in one who wrote : "No 
one is wicked voluntarily ; but it is an evil habit of 
body and a faulty education that is the cause of 
every case of wickedness " (Timaens, 86 E ; cf. Laws, 
731 c, d), which error receives a masterly confuta- 
tion in Aristotle, Ethics, IIL v. 



CHAPTER X, 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 

I, Though the name utilitarian is an English growth 
of this century, the philosophy so called probably 
takes its origin from the days when man first began 
to speculate on moral matters. Bentham and the 
two Mills, Austin, and George Grote, have repeated 
in England the substance of what Protagoras and 
Epicurus taught in Greece, two thousand years 
before. It is the system of Ethics to which all 
must incline, who ignore the spiritual side of man's 
nature and his hopes of a better world. It is a 
morality of the earth, earthy. 

2. Utilitarianism has not been formulated like 
the Athanasian Creed. It is impossible to state it 
and combat it in a form to which all Utilitarians 
will subscribe. Indeed, it is an amiable weakness of 
theirs, when confronted with the grosser conse- 
quences that flow from their theories, to run off to 
some explanation, true enough, but quite out of 
keeping with the primary tenets of their school. 
We will take what may be called a " mean reading " 
of the indications which various Utilitarian thinkers 
afford of their mind and philosophy. These authori- 
ties, then, teach two main heads of doctrine ; — 

M 



178 



OF UTILITARIAN^ ISM. 



(1) That the last end and final good of man 
lies in this world, and consists in the greatest happi- 
ness of the greatest number of mankind, happiness 
being taken to mean pleasure as well of the senses 
as of the understanding, such pleasure as can be 
had in this world, along with immunity from pain. 
(Mill's Utilitarianism, 2nd Ed., pp. 9, seq.) 

(2) That human acts are right or wrong, accord- 
ing as they are useful or hurtful, that is, according as 
their consequences make for or against the above- 
mentioned end of social happiness. 

3. Consequences, as Utilitarians very properly 
point out, are either general or particular. They add 
that, in pronouncing an action to be good or evil 
according to its consequences, they mean the 
general and not the particular consequences. In 
other words, they bid us consider, not the immediate 
results of this action, but what would be the result to 
society, if this sort of action were generally allowed. 
This point is well put by Paley {Moral Philosophy, 
bk. ii., c. vii.: all three chapters, vi., vii., viii., should 
be read, as the best explanation of the Principle of 
General Consequences) : 

" You cannot permit one action and forbid 
another, without showing a difference between 
them. Consequently the same sort of actions 
must be generally permitted or generally forbidden. 
Where, therefore, the general permission of them 
would be pernicious, it becomes necessary to lay 
down and support the rule which generally forbids 
them, . . . The assassin knocked the rich villain 
on the head, because he thought him better out of 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



179 



the way than in it. If you allow this excuse in the 
present instance, you must allow it to all who act in 
the same manner, and from the same motive ; that 
is, you must allow every man to kill any one he 
meets, whom he thinks noxious or useless : . . . a 
disposition of affairs which would soon fill the world 
with misery and confusion, and ere long put an end 
to human society." 

My contention is, not with the Principle of 
General Consequences, which has a certain value 
in Ethics, and is used by many writers other than 
Utilitarian, but with the two stated above, n. 2, 
which are called the Greatest Happiness Principle 
and the Principle of Utility. 

4. Against the Greatest Happiness Principle I 
have these complaints : 

(i) Utilitarians from Paley to John Stuart Mill 
aver that their teaching is no bar to any man hoping 
for and striving after the happiness of the world to 
come. They say that such happiness cannot be 
better attained than by making it your principal 
aim to improve all temporal goods and dissipate 
all temporal evil. Their maxim in fact is : ' Take 
care of the things of earth, and the things of 
heaven will take care of themselves.' Whereas it 
was the very contrary teaching of Him, whom 
moderns, who see in Him no higher character, still 
love to call the greatest of moral teachers : That 
which fell among thorns are they who have heard, 
and going their way, are choked with the cares and 
riches and pleasures of this life, and yield no fruit.'' 
(St. Luke viii. 14 ) 



i8o 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



(2) It will be said that these thorns grow of selfish- 
ness, and that these cares are the cares of individual 
interest, whereas the Utihtarian's delight and glory is 
to live, not for himself, but for the commonwealth. 
But how can a man, who takes pleasure to be his 
highest good and happiness, live otherwise than for 
himself? Here we come upon the unobserved fault 
and flaw, v/hich entirely vitiates the Utilitarian 
structure. It is an union of two opposite and in- 
compatible elements. An old poet has said ; 

Vinegar and oil in one same vessel pour, 
They stand apart, unfriendlyj all the more. 

(^schylus, Agam., 330, 331.) 

Utilitarianism consists of a still more unfriendly 
and unwholesome mixture of two elements, both of 
them bad, and unable to stand together. Hedonism 
and Altruism. Hedonism is the doctrine that the 
main object and end of life is pleasure : which is the 
position laid down in so many words by Mill (1. c), 
that actions are right in proportion as they tend 
to promote happiness ; and by happiness is in- 
tended pleasure and the absence of pain." If 
Hedonism were sound doctrine, the Pleasant and 
the Good would be identical, and the most pleasant 
pleasure would ever be the best pleasure. That 
would take away all distinction of kind or quality 
among pleasures, and differentiate them only by 
intensity and duration. This was Paley's doctrine, 
a fundamental point of Hedonism, and therefore also 
of the Utilitarian philosophy. John Mill, very honour- 
ably to himself, but very fatally to the system that he 
was writing to defcad, parted company witli Paley. 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



x8i 



We have argued against Paley (c. iv., s. iii., nn. 3- — 5, 
p. 55), that there is a better and a worse in pleasures, 
quite distinct from the more or less pleasurable, even 
if that more be taken m the long run in this world. 

Again it may be considered that pleasure, even 
the best and highest, is a sort of efflorescence 
from activity, and is for activity, not activity for 
it ; and better is the activity, v^hatever it be, than 
the pleasure which comes thereof ; wherefore no 
pleasure, as pleasure, can be the highest good and 
happiness of man. 

Hedonism then is an error. But errors may be 
opposed to one another as well as to the truth. 
Hedonism is opposed to Altruism in this way. A 
man may take pleasure in seeing other people enjoy 
themselves. Nothing is more common, except the 
pleasure taken in enjoying one's own self. But if a 
man only feeds the hungry that he may have the 
satisfaction of seeing them eat, is it the hungry or 
himself that he finally seeks to gratify? Clearly, 
himself. That is the behaviour of the Hedonist, he 
acts for his own pleasure even in his benevolence. 
The Altruist, on the contrary, professes never to act 
for self, but for society. So that society flourish, he 
is ready to be crushed and ruined, not in the matter 
of his pleasure only, but even in that of his own 
good. Selfishness, by v/hich he means all manner 
of regard to self, is, upon his conscience, the unfor- 
given sin. But Hedonism is selfishness in the 
grossest form, being the mere pursuit in all tilings of 
pleasurable feeling — feeling being always particular 
and limited to self, in contradistinction to good, 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



which is universal and diffuses itself all round. The 
Hedonist seeks his own pleasure, where the Altruist 
forbids him to take thought, let alone for his grati- 
fication, but even for his good. Thus an Hedonist 
cannot be Altruist to boot ; and, trying to combine 
the two characters, the Utilitarian is committed to a 
self-contradiction. 

If he relinquishes Hedonism, and holds to Altruism, 
pure and simple, his position is not much improved. 
Altruism overlooks the fact, that man, as compared 
with other men, is a person, the centre of his own 
acts, not a thing, to be entirely referred to others. 
He is in relation vAth others, as child, father, 
husband, master, citizen ; but these relations do not 
take up the whole man. There is a residue within, — 
an inner being and life, which is not referable to any 
creature outside himself, but only to the Creator. For 
this inner being, man is responsible to God alone. 
The good of this, the " inner man of the heart," is 
each individual's proper and primary care. Altruism, 
and Utilitarianism with it, ignore the interior life 
of the soul, and substitute human society, that is, 
ultimately, the democratic State, in place of God. 

(3) Another confusion that the Greatest Happi- 
ness Principle involves, is the mistaking the political 
for the ethical end of life. The political end, which 
it is the statesman's business to aim at, and the 
citizen's duty to subserve, is the natural happiness 
of the commonwealth, and of individuals as members 
of the commonwealth, that they may live in it in 
peace and justice, and with a sufficiency of goods for 
the preservation and comfort of bodily Hfe, and with 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



183 



that amount of moral rectitude which is necessary 
for this outward peace and preservation of the com- 
monwealth, and the perpetuity of the human race." 
(Suarez, De Legihus, III., xi., 7.) This is all the good 
that the Utilitarian contemplates. He is satisfied to 
make a good citizen^ a. good hcsband, a good father^ 
for the transactions of this life. He has no concern 
to make a good man up to the ethical standard, 
which supposes the observance of the whole natural 
law, duties to God, and duties within himself, as well 
as duties to human society, and by this observance 
the compassing of the everlasting happiness of the 
man's own individual soul. 

Against the Principle of Utility I find these 
charges ; 

(i) It takes the sign and indication of moral evil 
for the evil itself, as if the physician should take the 
symptom for the disease. It places the wickedness 
of an act in the physical misery and suffering that 
are its consequences. This is, I say, a taking of the 
indication for the thing indicated. An act is bad in 
itself and by itself, as being a violation of the rational 
nature of the doer (c. vi., s. i.), and being bad, it 
breeds bad consequences. But the badness of the 
act is moral ; the badness of the consequences, phy- 
sical. There is an evident intrinsic irrationality, 
and thereby moral evil, in such sins as intemperance, 
peevishness, and vanity. But let us take an instance 
of an act, apparently harmless in itself, and evil 
solely because of the consequences. Supposing one 
insists upon playing the piano for his own amuse- 
menty to the disturbance of an invalid who is lying 



184 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



in a critical state in the next room. Do the mere 
consequences make this otherwise innocent amuse- 
ment evil ? Yes, if you consider the amusement in 
the abstract : but if you take it as this human act, the 
act is inordinate and evil in itself, or as it is elicited 
in the mind of the agent. The volition amounts to 
this : * I prefer my amusement to my neighbour's 
recovery,' which is an act unseemly and unreasonable 
in the mind of a social being. Utilitarians fall into 
the capital error of ignoring the intrinsic value of 
an act, and estimating it wholly by extrinsic results, 
because they commonly follow the phenomenalist 
philosophy, which breaks away from all such ideas 
as substance and nature, and regards nothing but 
sequences and coexistences of phenomena. To a 
phenomenaHst the precept, Live up to thy nature, can 
have no meaning. 

(2) Aristotle (Ethics, II., iv.,3) draws this distinc- 
tion between virtue and art, that *'the products of 
art have their excellence in themselves : it suffices 
therefore that they are of this or that quality ; but 
acts of virtue are not done virtuously according to 
the quality of the thing done, but according to the 
state of mind of the doer; first, according to his 
knowledge of what he was about ; then, according 
to his volition, as that was guided or not guided 
by the proper motives of the virtue ; thirdly, accord- 
ing to the steadiness and fixedness of his will ; 
whereas all these considerations are of no account 
in a work of art, except the single one of the artist 
being aware of what he was about." Elsewhere 
{Ethics, VI., iv., 2), he says that virtue is distinguished 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



185 



from art as being action, not production. The Prin- 
ciple of Utility confounds virtue with art, or perhaps 
I should say, with manufactures. It judges conduct, 
as one would shoemaking, by trial of the product, 
or net result. So far from being solicitous, with 
Aristotle, that volition should be "guided by the 
proper motives of the virtue" which there is question 
of practising (c. v., s. viii., n. 4, p. 96: Ar. Eih,, III., 
viii.). Mill (Utilitarianism, p. 26) tells us that "utili- 
tarian moralists have gone beyond almost all others 
in affirming that the motive has nothing to do with 
the morality of the action." By motive he under- 
stands what we have called the end in view, (c, iii., 
s. ii., n. 2, p. 31.) So that, if one man waits on the 
sick for the love of God, and another in hope of a 
legacy, the morality of these two acts is the same, 
just as it makes no difference to the usefulness of a 
pair of boots, what motive it was that set the shoe- 
maker to work. True, Mill admits that the motive 
has " much to do with the worth of the agent : " 
but that, he hastens to explain, is inasmuch as " it 
indicates ... a bent of character from which useful, 
or from which hurtful actions are likely to arise." 
Even so, — the shoemaker who works to earn money 
for a carousal, is not likely to go on producing 
useful articles so long as another, who labours to 
supp'~rt his family. Such is the moral difference 
that Mill places between the two men ; one instru- 
ment of production is longer available than the 
other. 

(3) Another well established distinction is that 
between harm and injury^ injury being wilful and 



XS6 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



unjust harm. The housemaid, who in arranging the 
room has burned your manuscript of " sugared 
sonnets," has done you no injury, for she meant 
none, but how vast the harm to the author and to 
mankind ! Harm is visible in the effects : but injury 
only upon examination of the mind of the agent. 
Not so, however, the Utilitarian thinks : harm being 
equal, he can make no difference between a tyrant 
and a man-eating tiger. Thus George Grote says of 
a certain murderous usurper of the kingdom of 
Macedon : ** You discover nothing while your eye 
is fixed on Archelaus himself. . . . But when you 
turn to the persons whom he has killed, banished, 
or ruined — to the mass of suffering that he has 
inflicted — and to the widespread insecurity which 
such acts of iniquity spread through all societies 
where they become known — there is no lack of argu- 
ment which prompts a reflecting spectator to brand 
him as [a most dangerous and destructive animal, 
no] s. disgraceful man." (Grote's Plato, ii., p. io8.) 
Why Archelaus is described in terms of the tiger, 
and then branded as a disgraceful man, we are at a 
loss to conceive, except in this way, that the writer's 
philosophy forsook him at the end of the sentence, 
and he reverted to the common sense of mankind. 
But he should have either ended the sentence as 
suggested in the parenthesis, or have been willing to 
call the man-eater of the Indian jungle, who has 
"learned to make widows, and to lay waste their 
cities," a disgraceful tiger ; or lastly, he should have 
looked back, where he declared it was vain to 
look. iiDon Archelaus himself, and discerned in hirn 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



that moral deformity, and contradiction of reason, 
whereof a brute beast is incapable, but which is a 
disgrace and a stain upon humanity. 

A later writer, who presses Utilitarianism into the 
service of Socialism, is plainer-spoken than Grote, 
and says bluntly : " To be honestly mistaken avails 
nothing. Thus Herbert Spencer — who is under the 
delusion that we have come into this world each for 
the sake of himself, and who opposes, as far as he 
can, the evolution of society — is verily an immoral 
man. . . . Right is every conduct which tends 
to the welfare of society ; wTong, what obstructs 
that welfare." (Gronlund, Co-operative Commonwealth, 
pp. 226, 227.) Thus is overlaid the difference 
between harm and injury, between physical and 
moral evil : thus is the meaning of a human act 
ignored : in this abyss of chaos and confusion, 
which Utilitarianism has opened out, Moral Philo- 
sophy finds her grave. 

(4) The Principle of Utility sees in virtue a habit 
of self-sacrifice, useful to the community, but not 
naturally pleasant, and therefore not naturally good 
and desirable, to him that practises it, but made 
pleasurable and good and desirable to him by 
practice. (Mill, pp. . 53 — 57.) In this way virtue 
becomes naturally a very good thing for every one 
else but its possessor, but to him it is a natural evil, 
inasmuch as it deprives him of pleasure, which 
natural evil by habit is gradually converted into a 
factitious and artificial good, the man becoming 
accustomed to it^ as the proverb says, " like eels to 
skinning." This theory is the resuscitation of one 



x88 



OF UTILITARIANISM. 



current among the Sophists at Athens, and described 
by Plato thus. — The natural good of man is to afford 
himself every indulgence, even at the expense of his 
neighbours. He follows his natural good accord- 
ingly : so do his neighbours follow theirs, and try to 
gratify themselves at his expense. Fights ensue, 
till mankind, worried and wearied with fighting, 
make a compact, each to give up so much of his 
natural good as interferes with that of his neighbour. 
Human society, formed on this understanding, en- 
forces the compact in the interest of society. Thus 
the interest of society is opposed to the interest of 
the individual, in this that it keeps him out of his 
best natural good, which is to do as his appetite of 
pleasure bids him in all things, though it compensates 
him with a second-class good, by preventing his 
neighbours from pleasure-hunting at his expense. 
If then his neighbours could be restrained, and he 
left free to gratify himself, that would be perfect 
bliss. But only a despot here or there has attained 
to it. The ordinary man must pay his tax of virtue 
to the community, a loss to him, but a gain to all 
the rest : while he is compensated by the losses 
which their virtue entails upon them. 

Such was the old Athenian theory, which John 
Mill, the Principle of Utility in his hand, completes 
by saying that by-and-bye, and little by little (as the 
prisoner of Chillon came to love his dungeon), the 
hampered individual comes to love, and to find an 
artificial happiness in, those restrictions of his 
liberty, which are called Virtue. 

It was against this theory that Plato wrote hi? 



OF miUTARIANISM 189 

Republic^ and, to compare a little thing to a great, 
the whole account of moral good being in consonance 
with nature, and of moral obligation rising out of the 
nature of the individual man, as has been set forth 
in this brief Text-book, may serve for a refutation 
of the perverse doctrine of Utilitarianism. 

Readings,— VXd.io, Republic^ pp. 338 E, 330 A, 343 

C, D, E, 344 A, B, C, 358 E, 359 A, B, 580 C. 



MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 



Part III. Natural Law. 



We assume in Natural Law the preceding treatise 
on Ethics, and also the principal truths of Natural 
Theology. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF DUTIES OF GOD. 

Section I. — Of the Worship of God, 

I. Worship is divided into prayer and praise. To 
pray, and present our petitions to the Most High, is 
a privilege ; a privilege, however, which we are bound 
to use at times, as the necessary means for over- 
coming temptations and inclinations to evil. We 
praise and adore God for His sovereign excellence, 
vx'hich excellence, nevertheless, would found in us no 
positive duty if we stood free of all dependence upon 
God. In such an hypothesis we should lie simply 
under the negative duty of not thinking of God, 
speaknig oT Him, or acting towards Him otherwise 



192 



OF DUTIES TO GOD. 



than with all reverence. So we should behave to 
the Great Stranger, with civiUty, with admiration 
even and awe, but not with cordiaHty, not with 
loyalty, not with homage, not with love. Very 
different are our relations and our duties to God 
our Lord, in whom we live, move, and have our 
being." There is nothing in us or about us, no positive 
perfection of ours whatsoever, that is not His gift, 
and a gift that He is not giving continually, else it 
would be lost to us. We are therefore bound in 
His regard, not merely to abstention but to act. 
And first, for inward acts, we must habitually feel, 
and at notable intervals we must actually elicit, 
sentiments of adoration and praise, of thanksgivingj 
of submission, of loyalty and love, as creatures to 
their Creator, and as vassals to their very good 
Lord, for He is our Creator and Lord in the 
natural order, not to say anything here of the 
supernatural filiation, by which, as the Church says, 
" we dare " to call God " Our Father." 

2. We must also express these sentiments by 
outward act. All the signs of reverence, which man 
pays to his human superior, must be paid to God 
" with advantages " : bowing passes into prostra- 
tion, uncovering the head into kneeling, kissing the 
hand into offering of incense : not that these par- 
ticular developments are necessary, but some such 
development must take place. We shall not be 
content to think reverential thoughts, but we shall 
say, or even sing, great things of God's greatness 
and our indebtedness and duty ; such a vocal 
exercise is psalmody. We shall represent in 



wo RS Flip OF GOD. 



symbolic action our dependence on the Lord of 
life and death, and also our sinfulness, for which 
He might justly strike us dead : such a representa- 
tion is sacrifice. 

3. All this we must do, first, for the sake of our 
own souls, minds and hearts, to quicken the inward 
sentiment of adoration and praise. Worship, 
mostly of the silent sort," worship, that finds no 
expression in word or gesture,-— worship away from 
pealing organs and chants of praise, or the simpler 
music of the human voice, where no hands are 
uplifted, nor tongues loosened, nor posture of 
reverence assumed, becom.es with most mortals a 
vague, aimless reverie, a course of distraction, 
dreaminess, and vacancy of mind, no more worth 
than the meditations of the Lancashire stone- 
breaker, who was asked what he thought of during 
his v/ork, — "Mostly nowt.'' 

4. Again, what the body is to the soul, that is 
exterior devotion to interior. From the soul interior 
devotion springs, and through the body it manifests 
itself. Exterior devotion, without the inward spirit 
that quickens it, is worship unprofitable and dead : 
it tends at once to corruption, like the body when 
the soul has left it. Interior devotion, on the other 
hand, can exist, though not with its full complement, 
without the exterior. So that it is only in the union 
of the two together that perfect worship is given to 
God by men as men. Upon which St. Thomas has 
this naive remark, that they who blame bodily 
observances being paid to God, evidently fail to 
remember that they themselves are men." 

N 



OF DUTIES TO GOD. 



Thus we pay tithe to God for soul and body, 
by acts of religion interior and exterior. But man 
is, under God, the lord of this earth and of the 
fulness thereof. He must pay tithe for that too by 
devoting some portion of it to the direct service of 
God, to whom it all primarily belongs. For mine 
is the gold and mine the silver." (Aggeus ii, 9.) Such 
are the words that God spoke through His prophet 
to incite His people to restore his sanctuary. 

6. It is therefore not true to say that the sole 
reason of outward worship is to move the wor- 
shipper to interior devotion. It is not true that 
St. Peter's at Rome, and Cologne Cathedral, and 
the Duomo of Milan, with all their wealth and 
elaborate ceremonial^ exist and are kept up solely 
because, things of earth as we are, we cannot be 
depended upon to praise God lovingly within the 
white-washed wails of a conventicle, or according 
to the simple ritual of the Society of Friends. We 
would not, even if we could, pray habitually among 
such surroundings, where we could afford to better 
them. We have before us the principle of St. 
Thomas (la 2se, q. 24, art. 3, in corp.) : 

" Since man's good consists in reason as in its 
root, the more actions proper to man are performed 
under the direction of reason, the miore perfect will 
man's good be. Hence no one doubts that it belongs 
to the perfection of moral good, that the actions of 
our bodily members should be directed by the law 
of reason, ... as also that the passions of the 
soul should be regulated by reason." 

This means, not merely that if the bodily members 



WORSHIP OF GOD. 



or the passions stir at all, it is a good and desirable 
thing for them to be ruled by reason ; but further 
that it is a positive addition to human perfection 
that they should stir and be active, provided reason 
guide them. {Ethics, c, iv., s. i., n. 6, p. 45,) 

It certainly is an action proper to man to express 
in gesturej in voice, in concert and company with 
his fellow-men, and by employment of whatever is 
best and fairest and brightest under his command 
in the material creation, his inward affections of 
loyalty, of homage and devotion, of avv^e and 
reverence, of gratitude and love to his Creator, 

Good as these affections are in the heart of the 
worshipper, they receive an external complement of 
goodness and perfection by being blazoned forth in 
vocal utterance, singing, bending of knees, — by the 
erection and embellishment of temples, and offerings 
of gold, silver, precious stones, and incense,—and 
by men thronging those temples in multitudes for 
social worship, — provided always that the inward 
devotion of the heart be there, to put a soul into 
these outward demonstrations and offerings. 

7. Concerning these religious observances interior 
and exterior, it is as idle to pretend that they are 
tcsefid to Almighty God as it is irrelevant to object 
that they are useless to Him. Of course they are 
useless to Him. All creation is useless to God. A 
Being who can never receive any profit, increment, 
or gain, dwells not within the region of utilities. 
Theologians indeed distinguish between intrinsic 
and extrinsic glory, that is, between the glory which 
God gives Himself by His own contemplation of 



196 



OF DUTIES TO GOD. 



His own essence, and the glory which His creatures 
give Him. They say that God is thus capable of 
extrinsic increment, to which increment the praise 
and worship of His creatures is useful. But, after 
all, they are fain to avow that the whole of this 
extrinsic increment and glory is no real gain to God, 
giving Him nothing but what He had before in an 
infinitely more excellent mode and manner from 
and of Himself. Thus it appears that the extrinsic 
glory of God, to which the worship paid Him by 
man contributes, is valued, not because it is properly 
useful to Him, but because He is most properly and 
highly worthy of it. Thou art worthy, O Lord 
our God, to receive glory and honour and power: 
because thou hast created all things, and for thy will 
they were, and have been created." (Apoc. iv. 11.) 
And being v/orthy of this glory, He wills to have it, 
and does m.ost strictly exact it, for which reason He 
is called in the Scripture a jealous God, So those 
who reflect some sparkle of God's Majest}', and 
under some aspect represent His person upon the 
earth, as do princes, lay and ecclesiastical, have 
many observances of honour and respect paid to 
them, which are not useful as supplying a need — for 
who needs a salute of twenty-one guns ? neverthe- 
less their dignity is worthy of them, and they require 
them accordingly. 

8. What man feels strongly, he expresses in 
word and action. What all men feel strongly, they 
express by meeting together for the purpose. So 
that, if strong religious feeling is an element in 
every good and reasonable man's character, it is 



WORSHIP OF GOD. 



bound to find expression, and that a social expres- 
sion. Men must worship together according to 
some external form and ritual. God may reveal 
what He wills that ritual to be. In fact He did 
give such a revelation and prescription to the Jews. 
To Christians He has spoken in His Son, and still 
speaks in His Church, Any other than the one 
sacrifice that He has instituted, or any other public 
religious ritual than is approved by the religious 
authority which He has established, is to Him of 
itself, and apart from the invincibly erroneous 
devotion of them that pay it, an abomination : for 
He has ''not chosen it." Still we cannot say that, 
in every possible state of things, God is bound to 
reveal the ritual that He desires, or is bound Himself 
to designate the authority that shall fix the ritual 
which alone He will accept and allow of. If the 
will of God is not thus expressed, a ritual must still 
be drawn up. In a matter that excites the mind, as 
religion does, and where a large field is open for 
hallucination and eccentricity, it will not do to have 
individuals parading methods of worship of their 
own invention. Here the Greek maxim com„es in, 
TLfjia TO SaifMovLop Kara ra irdrpLa, honour the 
Deity after the fashion of thy country." Rehgious 
authorities must be set up, in the same way that 
the civil power is set up. These authorities will 
determine, not the object, but the outward manner of 
worship. Every great nation, or important member 
of the human family, would come probably to have 
its own characteristic rite ; and within each rite 
there would be local varieties. 



OF DUTIES TO GOD. 



Readings. — St. Thos., Contra Gentiles, iii., iig ; 
2a 236, q. 8i, art. 4, in corp. ; ih.y q. 81, art. 7 
ih., q. 84, art. 2: ih,y q. 85, art. i, in corp., ad i, 3; 
ih., q. 91. 

Section II.- — Of Superstitious Practices. 

1. Superstition is the abuse of religion. It is 
superstition, either to worship false gods, or to 
worship the true God with unauthorized rites, or 
to have dealings with wicked spirits, whether those 
spirits have once animated human bodies or not. 
Of the first head, the only avowed instance within 
our civilization is the Positivist worship of the 
Great Being, that is, of the collective Worthies of 
Humanity, if indeed it amounts to worship. The 
second head might have been meditated by Arch- 
bishop Cranm.er with advantage, when he was 
drawing up the Edwardine Ordinal. Under the 
third head comes Spiritualism, which we shall 
here not discuss in detail, but merely indicate certain 
principles upon which it must be judged. 

2. " There is nothing superstitious or unlawful 
in simply applying natural agencies to the produc- 
tion of certain effects, of which they are supposed 
to be naturally capable. . . . We must consider 
whether there is a fair appearance of the cause 
being able to produce the effect naturally. If there 
is, the experiment will not be unlawful : for it is 
lawful to use natural causes in order to their proper 
effects." (2a 2ae, q. 96, art. 2, in corp., ad i.) But 
this we must understand under two provisos. First, 
that the *'fair appearance" spoken of be not opposed 



SUPERSTITIOUS PRACTICES. 



199 



by a considerable force of evidence, whether of 
authority or of reason, tending the other way : for 
in this matter, which is not a mere matter of 
legahty, it is not permissible to run risks of becom- 
ing familiar with God's enemies. Secondly, that 
the cause, though natural, be not morally prejudicial. 
Not even a natural cause, brandy for instance, may 
be used to all its effects. Thus for the mesmeric 
sleep, though that should be proved to be purely 
natural, yet the weakening of the will thence ensu- 
ing, and the almost irresistible dominion acquired 
by the operator over his patient, render it imperative 
that such a remedy should not be applied without 
grave necessity, and under an operator of assured 
moral character. 

3. St. Thomas continues in the place last quoted : 
"Wherefore, if there is no fair appearance of 
the causes employed being able to produce such 
effects, it needs must be that they are not employed 
to the causation of these effects as causes, but only 
as signs, and thus they come under the cate- 
gory of preconcerted signals arranged with evil 
spirits." 

The modern Spiritualist is only too forward to 
avow his understanding with the unseen powers ; 
but he will have it that the spirits that he deals 
with are good and harmless. We must prove the 
spirits by the general effects of their communica- 
tions — whether they be in accordance with the 
known laws of morality, and the assured teach- 
ings of religion, natural and revealed. Also we 
must consider, from what we know from approved 



±00 



OF DUTIES TO GOD, 



sources concerning God, and His holy angels, and 
the spirits of the just, either already made perfect, 
or still suffering for a time, whether they are likely 
to respond to such signs as Spiritualists commonly 
employ. Also we must not ignore, what revelation 
tells us, of an "enemy," a "father of hes," who 
" changes himself into an angel of hght," and who 
is ever ready, so far as it is permitted him, to eke 
out curiosity, folly, and credulity, such as he found 
in Eve. 

Readings. — St. Thos., 2a 2ae, q. 93 ; q. 95, 
art. 4, in corp. 

Section III. — Of the duty of hiowing God, 

I. Rehgious worship is bound to its object, and 
cannot possibly be fixed in the hearts of men and 
the institutions of society, if the object be doubtful 
and fluctuating. False religion has often been set 
off with elaborate and gorgeous ceremonial, which 
has been kept up even after the performers had 
come to see in all that light and lustre a mere vain 
and unsubstantial show. Such vvere the rites of 
Roman polytheism, as enacted by augurs and 
pontiffs, the colleagues of Cicero and Ccesar. But 
though that worship was maintained, and even 
augmented, for political purposes, N\ithout a creed, 
yet never could it ha,ve arisen without some creed, 
however mistaken, earnestly held of old. A firm 
interior conviction is the starting-point of all 
outward worship. But if the modern hving wor- 
shipper is without creed and conviction ; if he be 



DUTY OF KNOWING GOD. 



a scoffer at heart, or at least a doubter; what a 
hollow, horrid skeleton thing is his religion, — all 
the more horrid, the grander its dress ! That is not 
worship, but mummery. 

2. If then to worship God is a duty, as we have 
proved, it is a duty likev/ise to know God. This 
supposes that God is knov/able, a fact which it does 
not lie within the province of this work to prove. 
To an unknown God, all the worship we could 
render would be to build Him an altar, without 
priest, prayer, or sacrifice, and so leave Him in His 
solitude. God is knowable by the manifestation of 
His works (Rom. i. ig) ; and where He is pleased 
to speak, by the revelation of His word. Apart from 
revelation — and, under a certain order of Providence, 
God might have left us without revelation — we 
should study our Creator as He is made manifest in 
the world around us, in the existence of perishable 
things, in the order of the universe, in the region of 
things eternally possible and knowable, in moral 
truths, in the mental life and conscience of man. 
Philosophy would be our guide in the search after 
God. Men with less leisure or ability for specula- 
tion would acquiesce in the pronouncements of 
philosophers on things divine ; and, in the hypo- 
thesis which we are contemplating, Providence 
would doubtless arrange for the better agreement 
and harmony of philosophers among themselves. 
Their trumpet would not send forth so uncertain a 
blast, were that the instrument, in the counsels of 
God, whereby the whole duty of religion was to be 
regulated. As it is, vv^e know better than philo- 



202 OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



sophy could teach us: for God hath spoken in His 
Son. 

Readings, — C. Gent., i., 4 ; la 2as, q. 91, art. 4, in 
corp. 



CHAPTER IL 

OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 

Section L — Of Killing, Direct and Indiyed, 

I. In a hiily country, two or three steps sometimes 
measure ail the interval between the basins of two 
rivers, whose mouths are miles apart. In the crisis 
of an illness the merest trifle will turn the scale 
between death and recovery. In a nice point of law 
and intricate procedure, the lawyer is aware that 
scarcely more than the thickness of the paper on 
which he writes lies between the case going for his 
client or for the opposite party. To rail at these 
fine technicalities argues a lay mind, unprofessional 
and undiscerning. Hair-splitting, so far as it is a 
term of real reproach, means splitting the wrong 
hairs. The expert in any profession knows what 
things to divide and distinguish finely, and what 
things to take in the gross. Moral Science in many 
respects gives its demonstrations, and can give them, 
only in the way of rough drawing," as Aristotle 
says. (7rap^;vX(W9 kol rvirw, Ethics, I., iii., 4.) But there 
are lines of division exceeding fine and nice in 
natural morality no less than in positive law. The 
student must not take scandal at the fine lines and 



KILLING, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 



ZD} 



subtle distinctions that we shall be obliged to draw 
in marking off lav/ful from unlawful action touching 
human life. 

2. It is never lawful directly to kill an innocent man. 
Understand innocent in the social and political sense, 
of a man who has not, by any kmnan act (Ethics, c. i., 
n. 2, p. i) of his own, done any harm to society so 
grievous as to compare with loss of life. To kill, or 
work any other effect, directly, is to bring about that 
death, or other effect, willing the same, either as an 
end desirable in itself, as when a man slays his enemy, 
whose death of its own sheer sake is to him a satis- 
faction and a joy, or as a means to an end, as Richard 
III. murdered his nephews to open his own way to 
the throne. We must then in no case compass the 
death of the innocent, either intending it as an end, 
or choosing it as a means. The assertion is proved 
by these considerations. To kill a man is to destroy 
the human nature within him : for, though the soul 
survives, he is man no more when he is dead. Now 
to destroy a thing is to subordinate that thing entirely 
to your self and your own purposes : for that indi- 
vidual thing can never serve any other purpose, once 
it is destroyed. The man that is killed ;s then sub- 
ordinated to the slayer, wholly given up, and as w^e 
say, sacrificed, to the aims and purposes of him who 
slays him. But that ought not to be, for man is a 
person. Body and soul in him make one person, one 
personal nature, which human personality is destroyed 
in death. Now it is the property of a person to be 
what we may call a^itoccntvic, referring its ov/n opera - 
lions to itself as to a centre. Every person — and 



204 



OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



every intelligent nature is a person* — exists and acts 
primarily for himself. A thijtg is marked off from a 
person by the aptitude of being another's and for 
another. We may venture to designate it by the 
term heterocentric. A person therefore may destroy 
a thing, entirely consume and use it up for his own 
benefit. But he may not treat a person as a thing, 
and destroy that, either for any end of pleasure that 
he finds in destroying it, or in view of any gain or 
good, whereunto that destruction serves him as a 
means. 

3. In the above argumentation account has not 
been taken of God, to whom for His sovereign 
dominion all created personalities stand in the light 
of things, and may be destroyed at His pleasure. 
But account has been taken of the State, to which 
the individual is subordinate as a citizen, but not as 
a man and a person. It is permitted no more to 
the State than to the individual ever to destroy the 
innocent directly. 

4. An effect is brought about indirectly, when it 
is neither intended as an end for its own sake, noi 
chosen as a means making towards an end, but 
attaches as a circumstance concomitant either to 
the end intended or to the means chosen. The case 
of a circumstance so attaching to the means chosen 
is the only case that we need consider here in speak- 
ing of indirect, concomitant y or incidental effects. The 
study of these incidents is of vast importance to the 
moralist. Most cases of practical difficulty to decide 
between right and wrong, arise out of them. The^' 

• The exception apparent in the Incarnation is not relevant hero. 



KILLING, DIRECT AND INDIRECT. 205 



are best illustrated in the manner of killing. That one 
matter, well worked out, becomes a pattern for other 
matters in which they occur. {Ethics, c. iii., s. ii., p. 31.) 

5. A man is killed indirectly, or incidentally, when 
he perishes in consequence of certain means em- 
ployed towards a certain end, without his death 
being willed by the employer of those means, or in 
any way serving that agent to the furtherance of the 
end that he has in view. If a visitor to a quarry 
were standing on a piece of rock, which a quarryman 
had occasion to blast, and the man fired the train 
regardless of the visitor, the latter would be in- 
cidentally killed. Now incidental killing, even of the 
innocent, is not under all circumstances unlawful. 
Where the end in view is in the highest degree im- 
portant, the means may be taken thereto, provided 
always that such an issue as the shedding of innocent 
blood be not itself the means discerned and elected as 
furthering the end : for no end however urgent can 
justify the employment of any evil means. {Ethics, c.iii., 
s. ii., nn. 3, 13, pp. 32, 36.) Suppose in the instance 
just given the quarryman saw that, unless that piece of 
rock where the visitor stood were blown up instantly, 
a catastrophe would happen elsewhere, which would 
be the death of many men, and there v/ere no time 
to warn the visitor to clear off, who could blame him 
if he applied the explosive ? The means of averting 
the catastrophe would be, not that visitor's death, 
but the blowing up of the rock. The presence or 
absence of the visitor, his death or escape, is all one 
to the end intended : it has no bearing thereon at all. 

6. We niust then distinguish between means and 



206 



OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



circumstances. The means help to the end, the cir- 
cumstances of the means do not. When the end is 
of extreme urgency, circumstances may be disre- 
garded : the means become morally divested of them. 
So I have seen an island in a river, a nucleus of rock 
with an environment of alluvial soil. While the 
stream was flowing placidly in its usual course, the 
island remained intact, both rock and earth. But 
when the w^ater came rushing in a flood, which was 
as though the island itself had gone speeding up the 
river, the loose matter at its sides was carried away, 
and only the central rock remained. The ordinary 
flow of the river past the island, or the gentle motion 
of the island up-stream, keeping all its bulk, repre- 
sents a man acting for an end to which reason 
attaches no great importance. He must then take 
a diligent reviev/ of all the circumstances that have 
any close connection with his action, to see if there 
is any that it would be wrong for him to v/ill directly. 
And if there is, he must abstain from willing it even 
indirectly : that is, he must abstain from doing the 
action, wdiich cannot be done without that objection- 
able circumstance attending it. On the other hand, 
the floating island being towed rapidly up-stream, 
with its loose sides falling away, portrays the con- 
dition of one acting for a purpose of imperative 
urgency : he considers the means to that end, and 
if they are good, he concentrates his will upon them, 
and uses them, disregarding, or even deploring, but 
nowise willing or being responsible for, the evil con- 
comitants which go with those means, but do not 
make for his end. Thus it is, that a circumstance 



KILLING, DIRECT AND INDIRECT, 



209 



which in ordinary cases goes to make the adoption 
of certain means reasonable or unreasonable, comes, 
in a case of great urgency, to weigh for nothing in 
the balance of reason, owing to the extreme and 
crying reasonableness of the end in view. Nor is 
this the end justifying the means, for that unhappy 
circumstance is never a means to the end. {Ethics^ 
c. iii., s. ii., n. 8, p. 34.) 

7. To illustrate by a diagram i 
C 

9 

. — .O' 

A, the agenty a bead on a Vv^ire^ can move only on 
the line A E, that alone being the line of means to 
the end. 

E reasonableness of end in view^ attracting A. 

U C, the amount of moral evil which the un- 
toward circumstance would involve, if it were willed 
directly. This U C repels A, tending to jam it on 
the line A E, which is absolutely rigid. 

A E, remoteness, difficulty, and uncertainty of 
the end in view. 

A U, remoteness of untoward circumstance from 
means chosen, which A is just in the act of taking. 
Then, for lawful action, the reasonableness required 
in the end in view is represented by the variation — 

EV a ^^^^ 
^ AU 

We observe that when AU is zero, while UC . AE 
remains a finite quantity (representing an appre- 
ciable evil), then EV becomes infinite : that is to 



zo8 OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



say, when the distance, dhTerence, or distinction 
between the evil circumstance and the means comes 
down to nothing at all, and the evil thing actually 
is the very means taken, then an infinite urgency of 
end in view would be requisite to justify the using 
of that means : in other words, no end possible to 
man can ever justify an evil means. 

Readings, — St.Thos., 2a 2se, q.64, art. 6; Cardinal 
de Lugo, De jfustitia ct Jure^ disp. 10, n. 125, 

Section II. — Of Killing do7ie Indirectly in Self-defence. 
I. On the question, whether it is lawful for one 
man to kill another in self-defence, St. Thomas 
writes (2a 2a3, q. 64, art. 7) : 

There is nothing to hinder one act having two 
effects, of which one only is v/ithin the intention [and 
election] of the doer, while the other is beside his 
intention [and election, that is. is neither intended as 
an end nor elected as a means] .... From the act 
therefore of one defending himself a twofold effect 
may follow, one the preservation of his own life, the 
other the killing of the aggressor. Now such an act, 
in so far as the preservation of the doer's own life is 
intended, has no taint of evil about it, seeing that it 
is niVLural to everything to preserve itself in being 
as n^iuch as it can. Nevertheless, an act coming of 
a good intention may be rendered unlawful, if it be 
not in proportion to the end in view. And therefore, 
if any one uses greater violence than is necessary 
for the defence of his life, it will be unlawful. But if 
he repels the violence in a moderate way, it will be 
a lawful defence : for according to the Civil and 



KILLING IN SELF-DEFENCE. 



Canon Laws it is allowable to repel force by force 
with the moderation of a blameless defence. Nor is it 
necessary to salvation for a man to omit the act of 
moderate defence in order to avoid the killing of 
another ; because man is more bound to take thought 
for his own life than for the life of his neighbour. 
But because to kill a man is not allowable except by 
act of public authority for the common good, it is un- 
lawful for a man to intend [that is, elect and choose 
as a means] to kill another man in order to defend 
himself, unless he be one vv-ho has public authority, 
who intending [electing] to kill a man in order to 
his own defence, refers this to the public good." 

2. The right then of self-defence even to the 
shedding of blood involves a mere exercise of indirect 
killing for a proportionably grave cause. The cause 
in question is the defence of your own life, or your 
friend's, or of some other good or possession that can 
weigh with life, as the honour and inviolability of 
your person, or a large sum of money. This must 
be in present danger of being taken away otherwise 
than in due course of justice. The danger must be 
present, and even imminent, not prospective. The 
right of self-defence even to the grievous harming of 
the aggressor, endures only while the danger from 
him is imminent, not when it is past, or the evil is 
already done. The right supposes no moral ob- 
liquity, no formal injustice on the part of the 
aggressor : he may be a madman making for you 
with a drawn sword. Nay further, not even material 
injustice — that is, the quality of an act which would 
be formally unjust, if only the agent knew what he 
o 



2IO OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



was about — is required. All that is requisite is 
that 3^our life, or something equivalent to life, be 
threatened, not in due course of law. 

3. The essential idea of self-defence is that of 
stopping a trespasser, one who, however innocently, 
is going about to trench on that good which you have 
a right to maintain and reserve to yourself. It is 
then no act of authority that you perform, but the 
dealing of one private person with another. Indeed, 
the party stopped is hardly regarded as a person : 
no account is taken of his demerits : he is regarded 
simply as an abridger and diminisher of what you 
have a right to preserve intact. You stop a man as 
you stop a horse, only with more regard to ihe 
moderatioji of a blameless self-defence, not using more 
violence than is necessary here and now to preserve 
what you have to preserve. 

4. The stopping, unfortunately, has often to be 
done in a hurry : there is no time to wait : for the 
next moment, unless you act promptly, it will be all 
too late, or all to no purpose, to act at all. Being 
done in a hurry, it has to be done in a rough-and- 
ready way, with such instruments as are to hand : 
you cannot afford to be nice about the means, care- 
fully purifying them, and shaking off the dust of 
objectionable circumstances. Now to stop a man 
in mid career all on a sudden, to render him power- 
less where he was about to strike, motionless in the 
direction whither he was about to go, and that in an 
instant, is of common necessity a rude treatment, 
very dangerous to him who experiences it, and under 
some conceivable circumstances hopelessly fatal. 



KILLING IN SELF-DEFENCE. 



211 



Still the fatality — in plain words, the death of the 
aggressor — is not directly milled. It is neither in- 
tended as an end, nor chosen as a means to an end. It 
is not v/elcomed as an end and desirable consumma- 
tion : on the contrary, it is put up with most re- 
luctantly as coming from your act : for you, a private 
individual, have no right to will and effect the death 
of any man, however guilty, as will be proved herjB^ 



after. It is not chosen as a means : for, formally as 
his death, it is no means to your end, which was the 
averting of all present danger to your right. For 
that it was enough to stop the trespasser ; and you 
chose the means as a stopping means, not as a killing 
means. True, in stopping him you killed him, but 
you did not kill him to stop him. You struck him 
to stop him : that your blow was a mortal blow, was 
a circumstance which you did not choose and could 
not help. Ail killing then in self-defence is in- 
direct. 

5. By this explanation, resting on St. Thomas — in 
opposition to Cardinal de Lugo {De Just, et Jure. 10, 
149) and others, who allow kilhng in self-defence to be 
the actual means chosen, and therefore directly willed 
— vv^e save four grand positions in Moral Science : 

{a) The axiom, that it is never lawful directly to 
take the life of an innocent man. For the person who 
perishes by occasion of your defending yourself, may 
be innocent formally, and even materially also. 

{h) Likewise the axiom, that it is never lawful for 
a private individual to kill any one whatever. We say, 
from a technical standpoint, that he does not kill 
but arrests the onset of the aggressor. 




112 OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



(c) We are in hearty accord with the positive law 
of all civilized countries, which views with extreme 
suspicion all deaths said to be done in self-defence, 
the law being jealous of the blood of its citizens, and 
reserving the shedding thereof to itself. We teach 
that only by process of law can a man ever be 
directly slain, his death made a means of, and the 
person, who strikes him, really willing and seeking, 
exactly speaking, to kill him. 

(d) The initial error is revealed of a theory that 
we shall have to combat at length hereafter, the 
theory of Hobbes and Locke, that the power of the 
State is the mere agglomeration of the powers of 
the individuals who compose it. It appears by 
our explanation that the individual has no power 
strictly to take life in any case, or ever to kill 
directly, as the State does when it executes a 
criminal. 

As a fifth point gained, we may mention the 
efficacious argument afforded, as will presently be 
shown, against the acceptance of a duel under any 
conceivable circumstances, a thesis otherwise not 
easy to establish by reason. 

6. In view of the question of the origin of civil 
government, we must carefully collect the differences 
between self-defence and punishment. Death locca-- 
sioned in self-defence is indirect : death inflicted as 
punishment is direct. Punishment is an act oi 
authority, of distributive justice, which lies from ruler 
to subject (Ethics, c. v., s. ix., n. 4, p. 104) : self-defence 
is of equal against equal. Punishment is medicinal to 
him who suffers it, or deterrent on behalf of the com- 



OF SUICIDE. 



213 



munity, or retrihitive in the way of vengeance. 
{Ethics, c. ix., s. iii., n. 4.) Self-defence is not on 
behalf of the community, still less for the good of 
the aggressor, but for the good of him who practises 
it and for the preservation of his right : neither is it 
retributive and retrospective, as vengeance is, but 
simply prospective and preventive of a harm imme- 
diately imminent. Finally, the right to punish 
abides day and night : but the right of self-defence 
holds only while instant aggression is threatened. 

7. These two diverse ideas of self-defence and 
vengeance were confounded by the Greeks under the 
one verb aixvveaOai. They are confounded by Mill, On 
Utility t in the fifth chapter where he speaks (p. 77) 
of the "instinct of self-defence," which nine lines 
below he converts into "the natural feeling of retali- 
ation or vengeance." It is a common but a grave 
mistake, and the parent of much bad philosophy. 

Readings, — St. Thos., 2a 23e, q. 64, art. 7. 

Section III. — Of Suicide, 

1. By suicide we shall here understand the direct 
compassing of one's own death, which is an act never 
lawful. There is no difficulty in seeing the unlawful- 
ness of suicide for ordinary cases. The world could 
not go on, if men were to kill themselves upon every 
slight disappointment. But neither are they likely 
so to do. It is the hard cases, where men are apt 
to lay violent hands on themselves, that put the 
moralist on his mettle to restrain them by reasons. 
Why should not the solitary invaHd destroy himself, 
he whose life has become a hopeless torture, and 



214 OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



whose death none would mourn ? Why should not 
a voluntary death be sought as an escape from temp- 
tation and from imminent sin ? Why should not the 
first victims of a dire contagion acquiesce in being 
slaughtered like cattle ? Or if it be deemed perilous 
to commit the departure from life to each one's 
private whim and fancy, why not have the thing 
licensed under certificate of three clergymen and 
four doctors, who could testify that it is done on 
good grounds ? 

2. To all these questions there is one good answer 
returned by Paley on the principle of General Con- 
sequences. {Ethics, c. X., n. 3, p. 178.) 

" The true question of this argument is no other 
than this : May every man who chooses to destroy 
his life, innocently do so ? Limit and distinguish 
the subject as you can, it will come at last to this 
question. For, shall we say that we are then at 
liberty to commit suicide, when we find our con- 
tinuance in life becomes useless to mankind ? Any 
one who pleases, may make himself useless ; and 
melancholy minds are prone to think themselves 
useless when they really are not so. . . . In like 
manner, whatever other rule you assign, it will ulti- 
mately bring us to an indiscriminate toleration of 
suicide, in all cases in which there is danger of its 
being committed. It remains, therefore, to enquire 
what would be the effect of such a toleration : evi- 
dently, the loss of many lives to the community, of 
which some might be useful or important ; the afflic- 
tion of many families, and the consternation of all : 
for mankind must live in continual alarm for the fate 



OF SUICIDE. 8X3 



of their friends, when every disgust which is power- 
ful enough to tempt men to suicide, shall be deemed 
sufficient to justify it." {Moral Philosophy, bk. iv., 
c. iii.) 

A word in confirmation of Paley on the plan of 
the medico-clerical certificate. There w^ould be 
doctors, and I fear clergymen too, who would get a 
name for giving these certificates easily : under their 
hand many a patient might be smothered by his 
attendants with or without his own consent. Many 
another wretch would consider, that if the learned 
and reverend gentlemen empowered to hcense his 
departure from life only felt what he had to endure, 
there would be no difficulty about the certificate : so 
he would depart on presumed leave. The whole 
effect would be to make men less tender of their 
own lives, and by consequence of those of others, to 
the vast unsettling of society. 

3. An argument from general consequences, how- 
ever, does not go down into the depths of things. 
There is always something morally crooked and in- 
ordinate in an action itself, the general consequences 
whereof are bad. It remains to point out the moral 
crookedness, inordination, and unreasonableness, 
that is intrinsic to the act of suicide, apart from its 
consequences. We find the inordination in this, 
that suicide is an act faUing upon undue matter, 
being an act destructive of that which the agent has 
power over only to preserve. It is natural to every 
being, animate and inanimate, to the full extent of its 
entity and power, to maintain itself, and to resist 
destruction as long as it can. This is the struggle 



2i6 OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



for existence, one of the primary laws of nature. 
Man has intelHgence and power over himself, that 
he may conduct his own struggle well and wisely. 
He may struggle more or less, as he sees expedient, 
looking to higher goods even than self-preservation 
in this mortal life : but he may not take that power 
of managing himself, which nature invests him with 
for his preservation, and use it to his own destruc- 
tion. Should he do so, he perverts the natural order 
of his own being, and thereby sins. {Ethics, c. vi., s. L, 
nn. 1—5, p. 109.) 

4. It may be objected, that man is only bound 
to self-preservation so long as life is a blessing ; that, 
when the scale of death far outweighs that of life in 
desirableness, it is cruelty to him^self to preserve his 
life any longer, and a kindness to himself to destroy 
it ; that in such a plight, accordingly, it is not un- 
natural for a man to put himself, not so much out 
of life as out of misery. To this argument it is 
sometimes answered that, whereas death is the 
greatest of evils, it is foolish and wicked to resort to 
dying as a refuge against any other calamity. But 
this answer proves too much. It would show that 
it is never lawful even to wish for death : whereas 
under many conditions, such as those now under 
consideration, death is a consummation devoutly to 
be wished, and may be most piously desired, as a 
gain and by comparison a good : as Ecclesiasticus 
says (xxx. 17) : " Better is death than a bitter life, 
and everlasting rest than continual sickness." The 
truth seems to be, that there are many things highly 
good and desirable in themselves, which become evil 



OF SUICIDE. 



217 



when compassed in a particular way. The death of 
a great tyrant or persecutor may be a blessing to the 
universe, but his death by the hand of an assassin 
is an intolerable evil. So is death, as the schoolmen 
say, in facto esse, and everlasting rest, better than a 
bitter life, but not death in fieri, when that means 
dying by your own hand. There the unnaturalness 
comes in and the irrationality. A mother, watching 
the death agony of her son, may piously wish it over : 
but it were an unmotherly act to lay her own hand 
on his mouth and smother him. To lay violent 
hands on oneself is abidingly cruel and unnatural, 
more so than if the suicide's own mother slew him. 

5. But though a man may not use actual violence 
against his own person, may he not perhaps cease 
to preserve himself, abstain from food, as the Roman 
noble did, in the tortures of the gout, and by 
abstaining end them ? I answer, a man's taking 
food periodically is as much part of his life as the 
coursing of the blood in his veins. It is doing 
himself no less violence to refuse food ready to 
hand, w^hen he is starving, on purpose that he may 
starve, than to open a vein on purpose to bleed to 
death. This, when the food is readily accessible : 
the case is otherwise when it is not procurable 
except by extraordinary means. 

6. Another consideration. To destroy a thing 
is the exclusive right of the owner and master of 
the same. If therefore man is his own master, in 
the sense that no one else can claim dominion over 
him, may he not accordingly destroy himself? The 
metaphysician will point out that master denotes a 



2i8 OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



relation, that every relation has two terms, that 
consequently a man cannot be his own master any 
more than he can be his own father ; and that, not 
owning himself, he may not destroy himself. But, 
leaving this metaphysical argument for what it is 
worth, we observe that man has a Master, Owner, 
Proprietor, and Sovereign Lord, God Almighty. To 
take your own life is to usurp the dom.inion of God. 
It is wronging the Lord of life and death. But 
none is wronged against his will : God is willing 
that murderers should be hung, may He not also 
be willing that men in m.isery should hang them- 
selves ? To this query suffice it for the present 
to reply, that God governs us for our good ; and 
that capital punishment makes for the good of the 
community, but never suicide, (c. viii., s. viii., n. 7, 
P- 349-) 

7. It was the doctrine of Aristotle and the 
Greeks, that the citizen belongs to the State, and 
that therefore suicide was robbing the State and 
doing it a formal injury. But no modern State 
takes this view of its subjects. No modern mind 
would place suicide in the same category of crime 
with robbing the Exchequer. 

8. The great deterrent against suicide, in cases 
where misery meets with recklessness, is the thought, 

In that sleep of death what dreams may come ! — 

above all, the fear of being confronted with an angry 
God. Away from belief in God's judgments and a 
future state, our arguments against suicide may be 
good logic, but they make poor rhetoric for those 



OP DUELLING. 



who need them most. Men are wonderfully imita- 
tive in killing themselves. Once the practice is 
come in vogue, it becomes a rage, an epidemic. 
Atheism and Materialism form the best nidus for 
the contagion of suicide. It is a shrewd remark 
of Madame de Stael : ''Though there are crimes of 
a darker hue than suicide, yet there is none other 
by which man seems so entirely to renounce the 
protection of God." 

Readings. — Ar., Eth.j III,, vii., 13; ib., V., xi., 
nn. I — 3 ; St. Thos., 2a 28e, q. 64, art. 5 ; St. Aug., 
De Civitate Dei, i., cc. 26, 27; Paley, Mor^ Phil,, 
bk. iv., c. iiie 

Section IV. — Of Duellings 

1. A duel may be defined : A meeting of two 
parties by private agreement to fight with weapons 
in themselves deadly. The meeting must be by 
agreement : a chance meeting of Montagues and 
Capulets, where the parties improvise a fight on the 
spot is not a duel. The agreement must be private : 
anything arranged by public authority, as the en- 
counter of David with Goliath, that in the legend 
of the Horatii and Curiatii, or the wager of battle 
in the Middle Ages is not a duel. It is enough that 
the v/eapons be in themselves deadly, as swords or 
pistols, though there be an express stipulation not 
to kill : but a pre-arranged encounter with fists, with 
foils with buttons on, or even perhaps with crab- 
sticks, is not a duel. 

2. The hard case in duelling is the case of him 
who receives the challenge. Let us make the 



OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



case as hard as possible. In a certain army, 
every challenge sent to an officer is reported to 
a Court of Honour. If the Court decide that it 
ought to be accepted, accept the officer must, or 
lose his commission and all hope of military dis- 
tinction. In this army, say, there is an officer of 
high promise who is believed to object to duels 
on conscientious grounds. An enemy pretends to 
have been insulted, and challenges him, on purpose 
to see him refuse and have to go down into the 
ranks, his career spoilt. The Court of Honour 
rules that the duel must come off. Of this very 
case, Reiffenstuel, a canonist of repute, about the 
year 1700, writes : 

*' The answer is, . . . that they who in such cases 
are so necessitated and constrained to offer, or 
accept, a duel, as that unless they offered, or accepted 
it, they would be held cowardly, craven, mean, and 
unfit to bear office in the army, and consequently 
would be deprived of the office that they actually 
enjoy, and support themselves and their family by, 
or would for ever forfeit all hope of promotion, 
otherwise their due and desert, — these I say in 
such a case are free from all fault and penalty, 
whether they offer or accept a duel." (In lib. v. 
decret., tit. 14, nn. 30, 31.) 

The author protests in his Preface that he 
wishes his opiinons "all and each to be subject to 
the judgment, censure, and correction of the Holy 
Catholic Church." The opinion above quoted was 
condemned, word for word as it was uttered, by 
Pope Benedict XIV. in 1752. 



Ot DUELLING. 



221 



Now for Reiffenstuel's reason. "The reason," 
he says, " is, because in such a case as is supposed 
the acceptance and offering of a duel is an absolutely 
accessary, and thereby a just and lawful, defence ol 
^our reputation, or goods of fortune, and, by equiva- 
lence, even of 3^our life, against an unjust aggressor, 
who we suppose does you an injury, and thereby 
gives you no choice but to call him out, or calls 
you out, and accordingly assails you in words, &c. 
Hence, as for the needful defence of reputation, or 
of goods of fortune of great consequence, it is law- 
ful, with the moderation of a blameless defence, to 
kill an unjust aggressor, so it will be also lawful to 
offer and accept a duel, and therein slay the other 
party." Reiffenstuel here evidently supposes that 
killing done in self-defence is direct. Those who 
agree with him on that point, proceed to draw differ- 
ences between self-defence and accepting a challenge. 
Of course the two are not the same. The true 
difficulty for them lies in making out how the 
reasons which justify self-defence in their view of it, 
do not also justify the acceptance of a duel : how, i. 
I may make another man's death a means to the 
preservation of my vital right, I may not as well 
make another man's risk of death and my own, 
which is all that a duel amounts to, also a means, 
none other being at hand, to the preserving of my 
no less vital right. This grave objection does not 
touch us. We have denied that killing in self- 
defence is direct. On the lines of that denial we 
meet Reiffenstuel's argument simply as follows. 

3. In self-defence, the aggressor is slain indirectly. 



OF THE DUTY OF PRESERVING LIFE. 



In a duel, not indeed the death itself, or mutual 
slaughter of the combatants, is directly willed, but 
the risk of mutual slaughter is directly willed. But 
we may not directly will the risk of that which we 
may not directly do. And the combatants may not 
directly do themselves or one another to death. 
Therefore they may not directly risk each his own 
and his antagonist's life. But this risk is of the 
essence of a duel. Therefore duelling is essentially 
unlawful. 

4. Such is the clenched fist, so to speak, of our 
argument. Now to open it out, and prove in detail 
the several members. In self-defence, neither the 
death of the aggressor nor the risk of his death 
is directly willed, whereas the risk of death is 
directly willed in a duel, which difference entirely 
bars the argument from self-defence to duelling. 
For a duel is a means of recovering and preserving 
honour, which is effected by a display of fortitude, 
which again consists in exposing yourself to the 
risk of being killed, and, as part of the bargain, 
of killing the other man. The risk to life is of 
the essence of a duel : it only attains its end — 
of establishing a man's character for courage — by 
being dangerous to life. Fortitude essentially con- 
sists in braving death. {Ethics, c. v., s. viii., n. i, p. 94.) 
Deadly weapons, chosen because they are deadly 
and involve a risk of life in fighting with such arms, 
are the apt and express means for showing readi- 
ness to brave death. If the weapons were not 
deadly, there would be no point in the duel. As a 
matter of fact, where our definition of duel is veri- 



OF DUELLING. 



fied, and weapons in themselves deadly are used, 
the encounter cannot be other than dangerous, 
especially between foes and where the blood is up. 
In the French army, where the regimental fencing- 
master stands by, sword in hand, ready to parry 
any too dangerous thrust, serious results still have 
occurred. If any man will have it that short smooth- 
bore pistols at forty paces in a fog are not to be 
counted dangerous weapons, all we can say is that 
MM. Gambetta and De Fourton, the one being 
nearly blind, and the other having lost an eye, did 
not fight a duel. In a duel then the danger of 
being killed and of killing is directly willed ; it is the 
precise means chosen to the end in view. 

5. We have proved already that it is not lawful 
directly to procure one's own death, nor the death 
of another innocent man. If any one contends that 
his antagonist is not innocent, not even in a political 
sense (c. ii., s. i., n. 2, p. 203), we must here assume 
against him, what we shall afterwards prove, that 
the guilty are not to be directly put to death except 
by public authority. But what we may not directly 
bring about, we may not directly risk the occurrence 
of. As I may not throw myself down a cliff, so 
neither may I walk along the edge precisely for the 
chance of a fall. I may often walk there with the 
chance of falling, but not because of the chance. It 
will be said that the English love of fox-hunting 
and Alpine climbing is largely owing to the element 
of danger present in those amusements. But it is 
not the danger pure and simple, that is chosen for 
amusement ; it is the prospect of overcoming 



X24 



OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH. 



danger by skill. The same may be said of Blondin 
on the tight-rope : it was his skill, not his mere risk, 
that was admired. There are some risks that nc 
skill can obviate, as those of Alpine avalanches. 
We may face a mountain slope where avalanches 
occur, but we must not hang about there because ol 
the avalanches, making our amusement or bravado 
of the chance of being killed. That would be 
willing the risk of death directly, as it is willed in 
duelling. 

Readings. — Paley, Mor. Phil., bk. iii., p. 2, c. ix. ; 
St. Thos., 2a 2ag, q. 72, art. 3, 



CHAPTER III. 

OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH, 

Section I. — Of the Definition of a Lie, 

I. "Let none doubt," says St. Augustine, ''that he 
hes, who utters what is false for the purpose of 
deceiving. Wherefore the utterance of what is false 
with a will to deceive is unquestionably a lie." The 
only question is, whether this definition does not 
contain more than is necessary to the thing defined. 
The objective falseness of what is said makes a vmte- 
rial falsehood : the will to utter what is false makes 
a formal falsehood (Ethics, c. iii., s. ii., n. 7, p. 33-) : 
the will to create a false impression regards, not the 
falsehood itself, but the eftect to follow from it. If 
a person says what is not true, but what he takes to 



Definition of a lie. 



225 



be the truthj he tells indeed a material lie, but at 
the same time he puts forth no human act {Ethics, 
c. i., n. 2, p. i) of lying. If on the other hand he 
says what he believes to be false, though it turns out 
true, he tells a formal lie, though not a material 
one, and moreover, he does a human act of lying. 
But human acts are the subject-matter of morality. 
The moralist therefore is content to define the 
formal lie : the material aspect of the lie is irrelevant 
to his enquiry. A formal lie is saying what one 
beheves not to be true, or promising what one 
mtends not to perform : briefly, it is speaking against 
one's mind. 

2. We shall show presently that to speak against 
one's mind is intrinsically, necessarily, and always 
evil. But when a thing is thus evil in itself, there is 
no need to bring into the definition of the act, from 
a moral point of view, the intention with which it 
is done. There is no use in prying into ends, when 
the means taken is an unlawful means for any end. 
If a person blasphemes, we do not ask why he 
blasphemes : the intention is not part of the blas- 
phemy : the utterance is a sin by itself. But if a 
person strikes, we ask why he strikes, to heal or to 
slay, in self-defence or in revenge. So, if speaking 
against one's mind is a thing indifferent and colour- 
less in point of morality, and all depends on the 
intention with which we do it, so that we may 
speak against our minds to put another off, but not 
to deceive him, then certainly the intention to 
deceive must be imported into the definition of 
lying. But if, as we shall prove presently, the act 
P 



226 



OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH. 



of so speaking is by no means indifferent and colour- 
less, but is fraught with an inordinateness all its 
own, then the intention may be left out of the ques- 
tion, the act is to be characterised on its own 
merits, and speech against one's mind is the definition 
of a lie. 

3. Then, some one will say, it would be a lie for 
a prisoner in solitary confinement to break the 
silence of his cell with the exclamation, Queen Anne 
is not dead. The answer is simple : it takes two to 
make a speech. A man does not properly speak to 
hjmself, nor quarrel with himself, nor deal justly by 
himself. Not that it would be a lie to deny the 
death of Queen Anne even in public : for speech is 
an outward affirmation, the appearance of a serious 
will to apply predicate to subject : but in this case 
there is no appearance of a serious will : on the 
contrary, from the manifest absurdity of the asser- 
tion, it is plain that you are joking and do not mean 
to affirm anything. This perhaps is as far as we 
can go in permission of what are called lies in jest. 

Readings. — St Thos., 2a 23d, q. 110, art. i. 

Section II. — Of the Evil of Lying. 

I. Human society cannot go on, if men are to 
be allowed indiscriminately to lie to one another. 
Thucydides (iii., 83) gives as the reason of the ex- 
travagant length to which faction ran in Greece in 
his time : " For there was no power to reconcile the 
parties, no plighted word reliable, no oath held in 
awe." Even in trifles no one likes to be lied to, and 
we are not to do to our neighbour what we would 



nviL OF LYING. 



227 



not have done to ourselves. The laws 01 good 
fellowship require that we should put aw^ay lying, 
and speak the truth every man with his neighbour : 
for we are members one of another." (Ephesians 
iv. 25.) This at least in ordinary circumstances. 
The same good fellowship requires that in ordinary 
circumstances we should respect the lives and 
property of our fellow-men. 

2. But it is lawful to take life in pursuance of 
the just judgment of authority: it is lawful to seize 
upon property in self-preservation. These excep- 
tions stand very harmoniously with the well-being 
of society, or rather are required by it, as we shall 
see later on. The law against lying, so far as it is 
founded on the general prejudice done to society by 
the shock of social confidence, and on the particular 
annoyance of the party lied to, may seem to 
admit of similar exceptions. Whoever has no 
reasonable objection to having life and property 
taken from him in certain contingencies, can he 
reasonably complain of any hurt or inconvenience 
that he may suffer from a lie being told him at 
times ? 

3. I put forward this difficulty, not as though it 
were without its answer in the principle of General 
Consequences : still it is a difficulty. Besides, if the 
whole harm of lying is in the unpleasant effect 
wrought upon the deceived hearer, and the scandal 
and bad consequences to society at large, it is a 
long way to go round to show that lying is impos- 
sible to God. He in whose dominion are all the 
rights and claims of man, is not to be restrained by 



S28 



OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH. 



the mere reluctance of His creatines to be deceived, 
or by the general bad effects of a lie upon the edifice 
of human credit. As Master He might impose this 
annoyance upon the individual, these bad conse- 
quences upon society: or by His Providence He 
might prevent their occurring, whenever He willed 
in His utterances to swerve from the truth. The 
only help for the argument for the Divine veracity 
on these grounds, is to urge with. Plato that none of 
the motives which lead men to lie can ever find 
place in the mind of God : that a lie is a subter- 
fuge, an economy, a device resorted to under stress 
of circumstances, such as can never serve the turn 
of the Supreme Being. But though God be inac- 
cessible to human reasons for departing from the 
truth, may He not have higher reasons, mysterious, 
and unsearchable, for such a deviation ? It is long 
arguing out this point. Better bring the discussion 
sharp round with the question : Is there not some 
element in the Divine Nature itself, which makes it 
impossible for God to speak false ? 

4. Undoubtedly there is such an element, deep 
down, even at the root of the sanctity of God. God 
is holy in that, being by essence the fulness of all 
being and all goodness. He is ever true to Himself 
in every act of His understanding, of His will, and 
of His power. By His understanding He abidingly 
covers, grasps, and comprehends His whole Being. 
With His w^ill He loves Himself supremely. His 
power is exercised entirely for His glory — entirety, 
but not exclusively, for God's last and best external 
glory is in tlie consummated happiness of His 



EVIL OF LYING. 



229 



creatures. Whatever God makes. He makes in His 
own likeness, more or less so according to the degree 
of being which He imparts to the creature. And as 
whatever God does is like Him, and whatever God 
makes is like Him, so whatever God says is like 
Him : His spoken word answers to His inward 
word and thought. It holds of God as of every 
being who has a thought to think and a word to 
utter : 

To thine own self be true, 
And it must follow as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 

5. God's sanctity is in His being true to Himself. 
His veracity is part of His sanctity. He cannot in 
His speech, or revelation of Himself, contradict 
what He really has in His mind, without ceasing to 
be holy and being no longer God. But the sanctity 
of intellectual creatures must be, like their every 
other pure perfection, modelled on the corresponding 
perfection of their Maker. Holiness must mean 
truthfulness in man, for it means truthfulness in 
God. God's words cannot be at variance with His 
thought, for God is essential holiness. Nor can 
man speak otherwise than as he thinks without 
marring the attribute of holiness in himself, that is, 
without doing wrong. 

6. To speak against one's mind is an act falling 
upon undue matter. Words are naturally signs of 
thoughts. Not that the words of any given language, 
as English or German, have any natural connection 
with the thoughts that they express ; but it is natural 
to men, natural to every intellectual being, to have 



230 



OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH. 



some mode of expressing his thoughts by outward 
signs ; and once a sign is recognized as the sign of 
a certain thought, so long as the convention remains 
unrepealed, whoever uses that sign, not having in 
his mind at the time the thought which that sign 
signifies, but the contradictory to it, is doing violence 
to the natural bond between sign and thing signified, 
by putting forward the former where the latter is 
not behind it. And since the due and proper matter 
for the sign to be put upon is the presence in the 
mind of the thought signified, to make that sign 
where the opposite thought is present, is, as St. 
Thomas says, an act falhng upon undue matter. 
The peculiar spiritual and moral inviolability of the 
connection betvv'een word and thought, appears from 
the consideration which we have urged of the arche- 
type holiness of God. This then is the real, in- 
trinsic, primary, and inseparable reason, why lying, 
or speech in contradiction with the thought of the 
speaker, is everywhere and always wrong. 

7. Grotius {De J^ire Belli et Pads, 1. iii., c. i., nn. 11, 
seq.) argues a lie to be wrong solely inasmuch as it 
is " in conflict with the existing and abiding right of 
the person spoken to." If right here means some- 
thing binding in commutative justice {Ethics, c. v., s. ix., 
n. 6, p. 106), we deny that any such right is violated by 
what is called a simple lie, that is, an untruth not in 
the matter of religion, and not affecting the character, 
property, or personal well-being of our neighbour. 
For if a simple lie is a violation of commutative 
justice, it carries the obligation of restitution {Ethics, 
c. v., s. ix., n. 6, p. 107) ; that is, we are bound to tell the 



EVIL OF LYING. 



truth afterwards to the person that we have lied to, 
even in a matter of no practical consequence, — quite 
a new burden on the consciences of men. Again, if 
the bar to lying were the hearer's right, whoever 
had dominion over another's right might lie to him ; 
the parent might lie to the child, the State to the 
citizen, and God to man, a doctrine which, away 
from its application to God, Grotius accepts. Lastly 
since volenti non fit injuria, the presumed willingness 
of the listener would license all manner of officious 
and jocose lies, as the authority of the speaker 
would sanction official fabrications. Thus, what 
with official, and what with officious speeches, it 
would be very hard to believe anybody. 

8. By our rejection of Grotius' theory we are 
enabled to answer Milton's question : " If all killing 
be not murder, nor all taking from another, stealing 
why must all untruths be lies ? " Because, we say, 
killing and taking away of goods deal with rights 
which are not absolute and unlimited, but become 
in certain situations void ; whereas an untruth turns, 
not on another's right, but on the exigency of the 
speaker's own rational nature calling for the concord 
of the word signifying with the thought signified, 
and this exigency never varies. Untruth and false- 
hood are but polite names for a lie. 

Readings. — St. Thos., 2a 23e, q. no, art. 3, in 
corp., ad. 4 ; ih., q. log, art. 2, 3, in corp. ; Ar., Eth,-j 
IV., vii. ; Plato, Rep,^ 382, 389 b, c, 



232 



OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH. 



Section III. — Of the keeping of Secrets without Lying. 

1. There are natural secrets, secrets of promise^ 
and secrets of trust. A natjcral secret is all a man's 
own private history, which he would not have made 
public, as also all that he discovers by his own 
observation of the similar private history of his 
neighbours. If a man finds out something about 
his neighbour, and, after he has found it out for 
himself, the neighbour gets him to promise not to 
publish it, that is a secret of promise. Lastly, if one 
man comes to another, as to a lawyer, or a surgeon, 
for professional advice, or simply to a friend for 
moral counsel, and in order thereto imparts to him 
somic of his natural secrets, those secrets, as they 
are received and held by the person consulted, are 
called secrets of trust. This latter kind of secret is 
privileged above the other two. A natural secret, 
and also a secret of promise, must be delivered up 
on the demand of an authority competent to inquire 
in the department where the secret lies. But a 
secret of trust is to be given up to no inquirer, but 
to be kept against all who endeavour to come by it, 
except where the matter bodes mischief and wrong 
to a third party, or to the community, and where at 
the same time the owner of the secret cannot be 
persuaded to desist from the wrong. This proviso 
does not hold for the seal of confession, which is abso- 
lutely inviolable. 

2. The main art of keeping a secret is, not to 
talk about it. If a man is asked an awkward ques- 
tion, and sees no alternative but to let out or lie, if 



KEEPING OF SECRETS WITHOUT LYING. 



233 



is usually his own fault for having introduced the 
subject, or encouraged the questioner up to that 
point. A wise man lets drop in time topics which 
he is unwilling to have pressed. But there are 
unconscionable people who will not be put off, and 
who, either out of malice or out of stupidity, ply you 
with questions against all rules of good breeding. 
This direct assault may sometimes be retaliated, 
and a rude question met by a curt answer. But 
such a reply is not always prudent or charitable, 
and would not unfrequently convey the very infor- 
mation required. Silence would serve no better, for 
silence gives consent, and is eloquent at times. 
There is nothing left for it in such cases but to lock 
your secret up, as it were, in a separate compartment 
of your breast, and answer according to the re- 
mainder of your information, which is not secret, 
private, and confidential. This looks very much 
like lying, but it is not lying, it is speaking the truth 
under a broad mental reservation. 

3. Mental reservation is an act of the mind, 
limiting the spoken phrase so that it may not bear 
the full sense which at first hearing it seems to bear. 
The reservation, or limitation of the spoken sense, 
is said to be broad or purey according as it is, or is 
not, indicated externally. A pure menial reservation, 
where the speaker uses words in a limited meaning, 
without giving any outward clue to the limitation, 
is in nothing different from a lie, and is wrong as a 
lie is always wrong. A good instance is Archbishop 
Cranmer's oath of fealty to the Pope, he having 
previously protested — of course out of hearing o| 



234 



OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH. 



the Pope or the Pope's representative— that he 
meant that oath in no way to preclude him from 
labouring at the reformation of the Church in 
England, that is, doing all the evil work which Henry 
VIII. had marked out for him in the teeth of the 
Roman Bishop.* Even broad mental reservation is 
permissible only as a last resource, when no other 
means are available for the preservation of some 
secret which one has a duty to others, or grave 
reason of one's own, to keep. 

4. The point to make out is that no lie is told. 
To speak under a reservation is a lie, if it is speech 
against the mind of the speaker. But how can it 
be aught else than speech against the mind, when 
the heart thinks yea, and the tongue says nay ? We 
answer that, in the case contemplated, the thought 
of the heart is, secrets apart, nay ; and though the 
word on the lips is nay simply, yet we must not take 
that word as the whole locution, but as a mere text, 
to which the situation of the speaker and the matter 
spoken of form a commentary, legible to any obser- 
vant eye. The word is an annotated text ; nay in the 
body of the page, with secrets apart inscribed in the 
margin. The adequate utterance is the whole page, 
text and gloss together ; that speech answers to the 
thought in the speaker's mind ; therefore it is no lie. 

5. The essential requisite is that the gloss, secrets 
apart, be not written in the speaker's private mind, 
but be outwardly and publicly manifest in the matter 
spoken of, which must be one that clearly admits of 

* Strype's Cranmer, i., pp 27, 28; ib., ii., Appendices 5, 6 : fid 

0%o^., 181?. 



KEEPING OF SECRETS WITHOUT LYING. 235 



secrets, and in the circumstances of the speaker, 
who is driven into a corner, and obhged to answer 
something, and yet cannot by any prudent man be 
expected to answer out of the fulness of all the 
knowledge that he may possibly possess. 

6. Nor let it be said that all confidence in the 
replies given to our questions is hereby destroyed. 
For most questions are in matters that do not admit 
of a secret. There the qualification, secrets apart, 
which may be said to attach to all answers, has no 
value and meaning : it is mathematically equal to 
zero ; and we may take the answer in full assurance 
just as it reaches our ear. Again, when a person 
volunteers a statement unasked, he cannot be sup- 
posed to be reserving secrets. But when delicate 
subjects are touched on, and inquiry is pushed to 
extremity by an unauthorized questioner, secrets 
apart is the handwriting on the wall. 

7. But why is not this qualification spoken out 
with the tongue ? Sometimes it safely may be, and 
then it should be so added. But, as the addition is 
unusual, our taking the trouble to express it would 
often certify to the inquirer that his suspicions were 
correct, though we ought not to tell him so. Our 
aim then must be to give such an oral answer as 
we should return, were the suspicion quite unfounded. 
Our questioner, if he is a prudent man, will piece 
out our phrase with the addition, secrets apart ; and 
he will understand that he can get nothing out of 
us either way, which is exactly what we wish him to 
understand. His unauthorized interrogatory has 
been met by speech that amounts to silence, arguing 



OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH. 



indeed our prudence, but leaving him as wise as 
before on the forbidden topic. If he is a thoughtless 
man, he is deceived, not by any intention or election 
of ours, but indirectly so far as we are concerned, 
an incidental deception which he has brouglu on 
himself. 

8. This then is a convention that obtains, not 
of positive institution, but dictated by nature herself, 
that on a matter which admits of being secret, any 
answer elicited under stress of necessity must be 
so construed, as that any grave secret that may be 
touched, not being morally in the power of the 
respondent to reveal, shall be taken to remain 
reserved. 

g. We may therefore sometimes avoid seeming 
to know what we know, or to be what we are. But 
we may never of our own proper motion step for- 
ward and court observation as being what we are 
not, or knowing what is against or beyond our 
knowledge. We may dissemble occasionally, but 
not simulate. The dissembler of a secret wishes 
for obscurity and silence : he wants to have the 
eyes of men turned aw^ay from him and their 
curiosity unroused. Whatever he says or does is 
to divest the idea of there being anything particularly 
interesting about him. But he who simulates — call 
him pretender, impostor, or quack — is nothing, if 
not taken notice of. The public gaze is his sun- 
shine : obscurity gives him a deadly chill. His 
ambition is to appear out of the ordinary, being 
really quite within common lines : the dissembler 
is in some respect beyond the ordinary, but wishes 



OF CHARITY. 



237 



not to show himself otherwise than as an ordinary 
mortal with ordinary knowledge. The pretender is 
on the offensive, challenging attention : the dis- 
sembler is on his defence against notice. " Simu- 
lation," says Bolingbroke, is a stiletto, not only 
an offensive but an unlawful weapon, and the use 
of it may be rarely, very rarely, excused, but never 
justified. Dissimulation is a shield, as secrecy is 
armour : and it is no more possible to preserve 
secrecy in the 'administration of public affairs with- 
out dissimulation than it is to succeed in it without 
secrecy." (Idea of a Patriot King.) 

Readings. — De Lugo, De Just, et Jure, 14, nn. 135, 
141, 142 ; The Month for March, 1883 ; Lockhart's 
Life of Scott, vi., 26. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF CHARITY. 

I. It is the difference between sensible apprehens'on 
and intellectual knowledge, that the former seizes 
upon a particular object and it only, as this sweet : 
the latter takes its object as the type of a class of 
similars, this and the like of this, this sweet as one of 
the class of sweet tilings. In like manner the love of 
passion, which is the love of sense, regards one sole 
object. Titius is in love with Bertha alone, not 
with woman in general. But an intellectual love 
is the love of a type of beauty or goodness, of this 
object and of others as they approach in Ukeness 



OF CHARITY. 



to it. Whoever loves William from an intellectual 
appreciation of his patriotism, in loving him loves 
all patriots. Every animal loves itself with a brute, 
sensible love, not a love to find fault with, nor yet 
a noble and exalted sentiment — a love purely self- 
regarding, quite apart from the good that is in self, 
but embracing self simply as self, and self alone. 
This is the first love of self even in man. But over 
and above this animal and sensible love, which no 
man lacks, there is in all men worthy of the name 
a second self-regarding affection of an intellectual 
cast, whereby a man loves himself as discerning 
with the eye of his soul the excellence of his own 
nature — how noble in reason, how infinite in 
faculty, in form and moving how express and 
admirable, in action how like an angel, in appre- 
hension how like a god, the beauty of the world, 
the paragon of animals." Intellectual self-com- 
placence overflows from self to similars. It is not 
self-love, it is love of the race, " the milk of human 
kindness," philanthropy. 

2. But man is a disappointing creature, after all 
a mere "quintessence of dust," unless he can rise 
above himself by relation with some superhuman 
being, and make his final fortune in some better 
region than this w^orld. Reason requires that we 
love ourselves, and love our fellow-men, for and in 
order to the development of the highest gifts and 
capacities that are in us. These are gifts and 
capacities divine, preparing us to find our everlast- 
ing happiness in God. {Ethics, c. ii., s. iv., n. 2, p. 22.1 
The lov<B that we bear to ourselves and our neigh- 



OF CHARITY. 239 

bour, in view of our coming from God and 
going to God, is called the love of chanty. Charity 
differs from philanthropy in looking beyond the 
present life, and above creatures. A materialist 
and atheist may possess philanthropy, but not 
charity. 

3. Beside the twofold love, animal and intellec- 
tual, which we bear ourselves, we may also and 
should love ourselves with the love of charity, seeing 
God's gifts in us, and desiring the perfection of 
those gifts in a happy eternity occupied with God. 
The charity which we should thus bear to ourselves 
is the model of that which we owe to our neighbour, 
whom we are to love as ourselves, not with the same 
intensity, but with the same quality of love, wishing 
him the good, human and divine, temporal and 
eternal, which we wish for ourselves, though not so 
earnestly as we wish it for ourselves. Our love for 
ourselves is stronger than for our neighbour : for, if 
love comes of likeness, much more does it come of 
identity. But by reason of the vast preponderance 
of the good that is rational and eternal over that 
which is material and temporal ; and also by reason 
of the principle laid down by St. Thomas, that 
"as to the sharing together of (eternal) happiness, 
greater is the union of our neighbour's soul with 
our soul than even of our own body with our soul " 
(2a 2as, q. 26, art. 5, ad 2), — we are bound to 
love our neighbour's eternal good better than our 
own temporal good, and in certain special conjunc- 
tures to sacrifice the latter to the former. We have 
no duty and obligation of loving his temporal good 



240 



OF CHARITY. 



above our own temporal good. But it is often 
matter of commendation and counsel to sacrifice 
our temporal interest to our neighbour's. This 
sacrifice is no breach of the order of charity, be- 
ginning at home : since what is resigned of material 
and perishable profit is gained in moral perfection. 
Especially commendable is the surrender of private 
good for the good of the community. Charity, or 
philanthropy, taking this form, bears the name of 
patriotism and public spirit. 

4. Charity, like material forces, acts in a certain 
inverse ratio to the distance of the object. Other 
considerations being equal, the nearer, the dearer. 
Nay, nearness and likeness to ourselves goes further 
than goodness in winning our love. This is natural, 
and charity presupposes nature, and follows its 
order. As we have more charity for ourselves than 
for others whom we acknowledge to be better men, 
so likewise for our kinsmen and intimate friends. 
We may put the matter thus. Charity consists in 
wishing and seeking to procure for a person the 
good that leads to God. One element is the 
intensity and eagerness of this wish and search ; 
another is the greatness of the good wished. Now 
we wish those who are better than ourselves to be 
rewarded according to their deserts with a greater 
good than ourselves : but this wish is but lukewarm 
compared to the intensity of our desire that we and 
our friends with us may attain to all the good that 
we are capable of. 

5. The Christian precept to love our enemies is 
merely the enforcement of a natural obligation. The 



OF CHARITY. 



obligation stands almost self-evident as soon as it 
is cleared of misunderstanding. The love of enemies 
is not based on the ground of their being hostile 
and annoying us. It would be highly unnatural to 
love them on that score. Nor are we in duty bound 
to show to one who hates us special offices of friend- 
ship, except we find him in extreme need, e.g., dying 
in a ditch, as the Good Samaritan found the Jew : 
otherwise it is enough that we be animated towards 
him with that common charity, which we bear to 
other men who are not further off from us than he 
is. If Lucius offend Titius, there being no other 
tie between them than the tie of friendship, Titius 
may, where the offence is very outrageous, hence- 
forth treat Lucius as a stranger. The question of 
scandal has sometimes to be regarded, but that is 
an extrinsic circumstance to our present subject. 
Nor are we concerned to say what is the better 
thing for Titius to do, but to say all that he is 
bound to do. He is bound to render himself as 
void of wilful malice, and as full of ordinary courtesy 
and good feeling towards Lucius, as he is in the 
case of Sempronius, a man whom he never heard of 
till this day. But if there be some other antecedent 
tie between them besides the tie of friendship, — for 
instance, if Titius and Lucius are two moni<:s of the 
same convent, two officers in the same regiment, two 
partners of one firm, — Titius is no longer justified 
in treating Lucius as a stranger. He must regard 
him with ordinary charity ; now ordinary charity 
between two brother-officers, or two fellow-monks, 
is not the same as between men who have no such 
9 



OF CHARITY. 



tie one with another. This is why we laid it down 
that we must be animated towards him who has 
offended us "with that common charity, which we 
bear to other men who are not further off from us 
than he is." 

6. This then being the exact obhgation, the 
same is easily estabhshed. We must love our 
enemies, because the reasons given for loving all 
mankind (nn. i, 2) are not vitiated by this or that 
man having treated us shamefully. The human 
nature in him still remains good actually, and still 
more, potentially ; and if good and hopeful, to that 
extent also lovable. Nor is this lovableness a mere 
separable accident. Rather, it is the offensive beha- 
viour of the man that is the separable accident. 
At that we may well be disgusted and abominate it. 
But the underlying substance remains good, not 
incurably tainted with that vicious accident. We 
must attend to the substance, which is, rather than 
to the accident, which happens, and may be abo- 
lished. Let us endeavour to abolish the accident, 
still so that we respect and regard the substance. 
Let us seek for redress under the guidance of 
prudence according to the circumstances of the 
case, but not for the ruin of our enemy. Let us 
not render evil for evil, but even in exacting a just 
satisfaction, make it of the nature of that compen- 
satory evil, which is by consequence good. Let us 
he angry witli our enemy, but sin not by hating him. 
{Ethics, c. iv., s. iv., n. 3.) We may seek satis- 
faction for any wrong we have suffered : in grave 
cases we must have recourse to the State for that : 



OF CHARITY. 



Mi 



but the sin, if any, of our adversary is not our 
concern to punish or to seek vengeance for. {Ethics, 
c. ix., s. iii., n. 4.) 

7. The same reasoning holds good even of public 
enemies, tyrants, persecutors, anarchists, assassins. 
We must include them in our prayers, wish for 
their conversion, and, though their case appear 
hopeless, we must not damn them before their 
time. If we found one of them dying by accident 
of cold or asphyxia, v/e should be bound by a grave 
obligation to use all ordinary efforts to bring him 
round and recover him. Still we m.ay use our best 
efforts to bring them to justice, even to capital 
punishment, according to the procedure of public 
law established in the country, and not otherwise. 
We may also with an inefficacious desire, that is, a 
desire that finds no vent in action, desire their 
death under an alternative thus, that either living 
they may cease to do evil, or that God may call 
them away to where the wicked cease from troub- 
ling. But we must not desire, nor be glad of, their 
death by any unlawful means, for that were to sym- 
pathise with crime. 

8. Real charity shows itself in action, succouring 
a neighbour in need, which is sometimes a counsel, 
sometimes a duty. It is an axiom, that charity is 
not binding with grave inco7ivenience. The gravity of 
the inconvenience in prospect must be measured 
against the urgency of the need to be relieved. A 
neighbour is technically said to be in extreme need, 
when he is in imminent peril of deadly evil to soul 
or body, '\nd is unable to help himself. We are 



OF RIGHTS. 



under severe obligation of charity to succour any 
whom we find in this ph'ght. 

g. By charity we give of our own to another : by 
justice w^e render to another that which is his. 
Charity neglected calls for no restitution, when 
the need that required it is past away : justice 
violated cries for restitution, for what we have 
taken away from our neighbour remains still his. 
The obligations of justice are negative, except for 
the fulfilment of contracts : obligations in charity 
are largely positive. {Ethics, c. v., s. ix., n. 7, p. 108.) 

Readings. — C. Gent., III., 117; 2a 2ae, q. 26, 
art. 4; ib., art. 7; ib., art. 8; 2a 28s, q. 25, art. 8; 
ib., art. 9 : ib., art. 6 ; Ferrier, Greek Philosophy, 
Socrates, nn. 13, 26, 27, 29. {Remains, vol. i., pp. 
227, seq.) 



CHAPTER V. 

OF RIGHTS. 

Section I. — Of the definition and division of Rights. 

I. A right is that in virtue of which a person calls 
anything his own. More elaborately, a right is a 
moral power residing in a person, in virtue whereof he 
refers to himself as well his own actions as also other 
things, which stand referred to him in preference to other 
persons. A right is a moral power, as distinguished 
from physical force or ability. It resides in 2. person, a 
being whom we call autocentric, as distinguished from 
a thing, which is hetcroccntric. (c. ii., s. i., n. 2, p. 203.) 



DEFINITION AND DIVISION OF RIGHTS. 245 



A person is his own, a thing is another's. Every 
intellectual nature is a person except the Humanity 
of Christ, an exception which does not concern us 
here. To the Creator all created personalities are 
as things, but that again is not our concern in this 
place, where we treat of the relations between man 
and man. It will have to be noted hereafter with 
great emphasis, that the individual man is a person, 
not a thing and chattel, in relation to the Stale, and 
consequently has rights against the State. 

2. Every intellectual being has the attribute of 
refcex consciousness. It may turn its regard in upon 
itself, and call itself me, and its powers and activities 
mine. It certainly has the physical ability of acting 
for self, and using its powers consciously for its own 
ends. Does this physical ability represent also a 
moral power? Is the agent justified in exercising 
it ? and are his fellows under a moral obligation 
of justice to leave him free to exercise it ? {Ethics, c. 
vi., s. i., nn. 5. 6, p. iii.) We have seen that morality 
consists in acting up to one's own intellectual or 
rational nature. Since then the calling oneself 
me, and one's power mine, and the using those 
powers for purposes which one's reason approves, 
is the distinguishing feature of an intellectual, or 
rational, and personal being, that being is morally 
warranted so to act. He calls himself his own, and 
his powers his own, and they are his own by the 
very fact of his calling them so by a natural act. 
And, as justice is to give to another his own, others 
are bound in justice to leave him free to dispose of 
himself and his powers, at least within certain 



246 



OF RIGHTS. 



limits. But this would be for man a barren free- 
dom, were he not empowered to lay hold of and 
make his own some things, nay many things, out- 
side of himself, for man is not self-sufficient, but 
has many natural necessities, and many ps3xhical 
cravings to boot. Therefore man's right of pre- 
ference extends, not only to his own actions, but 
also to external things, which he may make his own 
to act upon. 

3. Rights are either connatural or acquired. Con- 
natural rights spring from the very being of a man, 
as he is a person. Such are the rights to life, to 
honour, to personal liberty — that is, freedom, to go 
where you will — to civil liberty — that is, not being 
a slave — also the rights to marry and to acquire 
property. Acquired rights spring from some deed 
of man, annexing something to his personality. 
Such are the rights to property, duly entered upon, 
to reputation, to the political franchise, and all 
rights that come by contract. Acquired rights may 
descend to heirs. 

4. Rights again are alienable and inalienable, 
which division does not coincide with tiie preced- 
ing. Those rights are inalienable, shorn of which 
a man cannot work out his last end. Some rights 
are thus permanently and universally inalienable, 
as the right to life : others are so occasionally and 
for particular persons. 

5. The correlative of right is duty : so that, wher- 
ever one man has a right, his neighbours have a 
duty in justice to leave him free to exercise the 
same. But the converse is not true, that wherever 



DEFINITION AND DIVISION OF RIGHTS. 247 



one man has a duty towards another, that other 
has a right to its performance, for there are duties 
of charity, which do not impart a corresponding 
right, but only a claim. Duties that correspond 
to rights are called by English moralists perfect 
duties. Duties answering to claims only they call 
imperfect. 

6. Of duties, some are positive^ which bind always^ 
not for always, as the duty of adoring God. We 
are always bound to adore, we are not bound to be 
always adoring. Other duties are negative, and 
bind always, for always, as the duties of sobriety 
and chastity. The former class of duties we may 
more easily be excused from, because they can be 
deferred, and it is at times morally impossible to 
take them up. But negative duty, as Mr. Gladstone 
has finely said, rises with us in the morning, and 
goes to rest with us at night : it is the shadow that 
follows us wheresoever we go, and only leaves us 
when we leave the light of life." 

7. Only a person has rights, as appears by the 
definition of a right. Again, only persons have 
duties, for they only have free will. No one has 
duties without rights, and no man has rights with- 
out duties. Infants and idiots, in whom the use ol 
reason is impeded, having notwithstanding rights, 
are said to have duties also radically. Hence it is 
wrong to make an idiot commit what is in him a 
material breach of some negative duty, as of tem- 
perance. Positive duties he is excused from. 

8. Some have taught that all human rights are 
consequences of duties; a man having first a duty 



248 



OF RIGHTS. 



to perform, and then a right to the means necessary 
to its performance. But this doctrine appears more 
pious than probable. For, first, the type and 
example of sovereign right, God, has no duties. 
{EtJiicSy c. vi., s. ii., n. 4, p. 130.) Then again, a 
man may have a right conjoined with a duty — not 
of justice, of course, but of some other virtue, as 
of religion — not to use that right. But if rights 
were consequent upon duties, the right would cease 
in such a case ; and to pretend to exercise it would 
be a sin against justice, which it is not. 

Section II. — Of the so-called Rights of Animals. 

I. Brute beasts, not having understanding and 
therefore not being persons, cannot have any rights. 
The conclusion is clear. They are not autocentric. 
They are of the number of things, which are another's : 
they are chattels, or cattle. We have no duties to 
them, — not of justice, as is shown; not of religion, 
unless we are to worship them, like the Egyptians of 
old ; not of fidelity, for they are incapable of accept- 
ing a promise. The only question can be of charity. 
Have we duties of charity to the lower animals ? 
Charity is an extension of the love of ourselves to 
beings like ourselves, in view of our common nature 
and our common destiny to happiness in God. (c. iv., 
nn. I, 2, p. 239.) It is not for the present treatise 
to prove, but to assume, that our nature is not 
common to brute beasts but immeasurably above 
theirs, higher indeed above them than we are 
below the angels. ]\Ian alone speaks, man alone 



SO-CALLED RIGHTS OF ANIMALS. 249 



hopes to contemplate for ever, if not — in the natural 
order — the Face of his Father in Heaven, at least 
the reflected brightness of that Divine Face. {Ethics, 
c. ii., s. iv., nn. 3, 4.) We have then no duties 
of charity, nor duties of any kind, to the lower 
animals, as neither to stocks and stones. 

2. Still we have duties about stones, not to fling 
them through our neighbour's windows ; and we 
have duties about brute beasts. We must not harm 
them, when they are our neighbour's property. 
We must not break out into paroxysms of rage and 
impatience in dealing with them. It is a miserable 
way of showing off human pre-eminence, to torture 
poor brutes in malevolent glee at their pain and 
helplessness. Such wanton cruelty is especially 
deplorable, because it disposes the perpetrators to 
be cruel also to men. As St. Thomas says (la 2se, 
q. 102, art. 6, ad 8) : 

Because the passion of pity arises from the 
afflictions of others, and it happens even to brute 
animals to feel pain, the affection of pity may 
arise in man even about the afflictions of animals. 
Obviously, whoever is practised in the affection of 
pity towards animals, is thereby more disposed to 
the affection of pity towards men : whence it is said 
in Proverbs xii. 10: * The just regardeth the lives of 
his beasts, but the bowels of the wicked are cruel.' 
And therefore the Lord, seeing the Jewish people to 
be cruel, that He might reclaim them to pity, wished 
to train them to pity even towards brute beasts, for- 
bidding certain things to be done to animals which 
seem to touch upon cruelty. And therefore He 



OF RIGHTS. 



forbade them to seethe the kid in the mother's 
milk (Deut. xiv. 21), or to muzzle the treading 
ox (Deut. XXV. 4), or to kill the old bird with the 
young." (Deut. xxii. 6, 7.) 

3. It is wanton cruelty to vex and annoy a brute 
beast for sport. This is unworthy of man, and 
disposes him to inhumanity towards his own species. 
Yet the converse is not to be relied on : there have 
been cruel men who have made pets of the brute 
creation. But there is no shadow of evil resting on 
the practice of causing pain to brutes in sporty where 
the pain is not the sport itself, but an incidental 
concomitant of it. Much more in all that conduces 
to the sustenance of m.an may we give pain to 
brutes, as also in the pursuit of science. Nor are 
we bound to any anxious care to make this pain as 
httle as may be. Brutes are as things in our regard : 
so far as they are useful to us, they exist for us, 
not for themselves ; and we do right in using them 
unsparingly for our need and convenience, though 
not for our wantonness. If then any special case 
of pain to a brute creature be a fact of considerable 
value for observation in biological science or the 
medical art, no reasoned considerations of morality 
can stand in the way of man making the experiment, 
yet so that even in the quest of science he be mindful 
of mercy. 

4. Altogether it will be found that a sedulous 
observance of the rights and claims of other men, 
a mastery over one's own passions, and a reverence 
for the Creator, give the best assurance of a wise 
and humane treatment of the lower animals. But 



HONOUR AND REPUTATION. 



251 



to preach kindness to brutes as a primary obligation, 
and capital point of amendment in the conversion 
of a sinner, is to treat the sj'mptom and leave un- 
checked the inward malady. 

Reading.— St, Thos., 2a 2se, q, 25, art. 3. 

Section III. — Of tlie right to Honour and Reputation. 

1. Honour is the attestation of another's excel- 
lence. Reputation is the opinion of many touching 
another's life and conduct. Honour is paid to a 
man to his face, whereas his reputation is bruited 
behind his back. Honour is taken away by instdt, 
reputation by detraction. If the detraction involve a 
falsehood, it is called calumny or slander. The name 
backbiting, given to detraction, points to the absence 
of the person spoken of. But no one meets with 
an insult except where he is present, either in person 
or by his representative. 

2. Both honour and reputation are goods that 
a man can call his own, and has a right to, but on 
different titles. Honour, some honour at least, 
appertains to a man simply for his being a man : 
reputation is won by deeds. Honour is primarily a 
ccnnatural right : reputation is acquired. An entire 
stranger has no reputation, but a certain honour is 
his due to start with. 

3. As there is a right to honour and a right to 
reputation, so insult and detraction are sins, not 
against charity, but against commutative justice, 
calling for restitution. (Ethics, c. v., s. ix., n. 6, p. 106.) 
We must tender an apology for an insult, and labouj 



252 



OF RIGHTS. 



to restore the good name that our detracting tongue 
has taken away. 

4. Calumny is a double sin, one sin against 
truth, and another sin, the heavier of the two, 
against justice. If the blackening tale be true, the 
first sin is absent, but the second is there. The 
truth of the story is no justification for our publish- 
ing it. Though it is wrong to lie, it is not always 
right to blurt out the truth, especially when we are 
not asked for it. There are unprofitable disclosures, 
unseasonable, harmful, and wrongful. But, it will 
be said, does not a man forego his right to reputa- 
tion by doing the evil that belies his fair fame ? No, 
his right remains, unless the evil that he does, either 
of its own proper working or by the scandal that it 
gives, be subversive of social order. If he has com- 
mitted a crime against society, he is to be denounced 
to the authorities who have charge of society : they 
will judge him, and, finding him guilty, they will 
punish him and brand him v/ith infamy. If, again, 
he does evil, though not immediately against society, 
yet in the face of society and before the sun ; he 
shocks the public conscience and rends his own 
reputation. But the evil private and proper to him- 
self that any man works in secret, is not society's 
care, nor affects his social standing, nor brings any 
rightful diminution to his good name. If all our 
secret and personal offences are liable to be made 
pubHc by any observer, which of us shall abide it ? 
Our character is our public character ; and that is 
not forfeit except for some manner of public sin. 

5. Suppose a veteran, long retired, has made a 



OP CONTRACTS. 



255 



name for military prowess by boasting of battles 
wherein he never came into danger, is the one old 
comrade who remembers him for a skulker and a 
runaway, justified in showing him up ? No, for that 
reputation, however mendaciously got together, is 
still truly a good possession : it is not a fruit ol 
injustice, therefore it is no matter of restitution : 
nor is it any instrument of injustice, which the 
holder is bound to drop : thus, as he is not bound 
to forego it, now that he has got it, so his neigh- 
bour may not rightfully take it from him. 
Reading. — St. Thos., 2a 2as, q. 73, art. I. 

Section IV. — Of Contracts, 

1. A contract is a bargain productive of an obli- 
gation of commutative justice in each of the con- 
tracting parties. A bargain is a consent of two wills 
to the same object. Thus a promise, before it is 
accepted, is not a bargain. But even after accept- 
ance a promise is not a contract, foi the promiser 
may not choose to bind himself in justice, but only 
in good faith, while the promisee is under no obliga- 
tion whatever. 

2. There are such things as implicit contracts, 
attached to the bearing of certain offices, whereby a 
man becomes his brother's keeper. The liability 
contracted is limited by the nature of the office : 
thus a physician is officially bound in justice as to 
his patient's pulse, but not officially as to his purse. 
Where there is no exphcit contract, the duties which 
the subjects of a person's official care have towards 
him are not duties of commutative justice. Thus 



254 



OF RIGHTS. 



these implicit contracts are not strictly contracts, as 
failing to carry a full reciprocity. 

3. Contracts are either consensual or real, accord- 
ing as they are either complete by the mere consent 
of the parties, or further require that something 
should change hands and pass from one to the 
other. What contracts are consensual, and what 
real, depends chiefly on positive law. No natural 
law can tell whether buying and selling, for instance, 
be a consensual or a real contract. The interest of 
this particular case is when the goods are lost in 
transmission ; then whichever of the two parties at 
the time be determined to be the owner, apart from 
culpable negligence or contrary agreement of the 
sender, he bears the loss, on the principle, res perii 
domino, 

4. Contracts are otherwise divided as onerous 
and gratuitous. In an onerous contract either party 
renders some advantage in return for the advantage 
that he receives, as when Titius hires the horse of 
Caius. In a gratuitous contract all the advantage 
is on one side, as w'hen Titius does not hire but 
borrows a horse. The Roman lawyers further 
distinguish contracts, somewhat humorously, into 
contracts with names and coitracts witliout names, or 
nominate and innominate, as anatomists name a 
certain bone the innominate bone, and a certain 
artery the innominate artery. Innominate contracts 
are reckoned four : I give on the terms of your givi}ig, 
otherwise than as buying and selling, — to some 
forms of this there are English names, as exchange 
and barter : I da on the icniis of your doing: I do on 



OF VSURf. 



«55 



the to'DLS of your giving: I give on the terms of your 
doing. 

Readings, — De 'L\igo,DeJnst. et Jure, 22, nn. i, 2, 5, 
6, 9, 16, 17. For buying and selling and the frauds 
incident thereto, Paley, Moral Philosophy, bk. iii., p. i, 
c. vii. 

Section V. — Of Usury. 

1. We must distinguish use value and market 
value. The use value of an article of property is the 
esteem which the owner has of it from every other 
point of view except as a thing to sell. Thus a 
man values his overcoat on a journey as a protec- 
tion from cold and rain. A book is valued that 
was held in the dying hand of a parent. This is 
use value. The market value of an article is the 
estimate of society, fixing the rate of exchange 
between that and other articles, so much of one for 
so much of another, e.g., between mahogany and 
cedar wood, considered as things to sell. 

2. Answering to this twofold value is a twofold 
exchange, private exchange, which regards use value ; 
and commercial exchange, which is founded on market 
value. If I part with my watch to a sailor for 
carrying me across an arm of the sea where there is 
no public ferry, that is private exchange. If I pay 
the ordinary fare where there is a public ferry, that 
is commercial exchange. 

3. Private exchange begins in the need of at 
least one of the contracting parties. It is an act 
of charity in the other party to accommodate him 
by offering the thing needed. If the offer is made 
otherwise than as a gift, and is accepted, he who 



OP RIGHTS. 



avails himself of it is bound in justice to see that the 
afforder of the accommodation is compensated for 
the loss that he suffers in affording it. Thus far the 
recipient is bound in justice, and no further in that 
virtue. However wholesome or profitable the thing 
be to him that gets it, the supplier cannot charge 
for that but only for the loss that he himself suffers, 
or the gain that he foregoes, in handing the thing 
over, or the pains that he takes, or the hardship 
that he endures, or the risk that he runs, in ren- 
dering the service desired. If all the labour to be 
undergone, or damage incurred, or risk encountered, 
by the sailor who goes about by private bargain to 
be my ferryman, is fairly met by the remuneration 
of a thirty-shilling watch, he has no right to stipu- 
late for any more, not though the passage that he 
gives me sets me on the way to a throne. The 
peculiar advantage that I have in prospect does not 
come out of him, but out of myself. He must not 
pretend to sell what is not his, what attaches, not 
to him, but to me. He can only sell his own loss, 
risk, pains and labour. At the same time, if I have 
any gentlemanly or generous feeling in me, I shall 
be forward to bestow extra remuneration on one 
who has rendered me so timely a service : but this 
is matter of my gratitude, not of his right and claim 
in justice. Gratitude must not be put into the bill. 
And this much of private exchange. 

4. Commercial exchange is conducted according 
to market value. Apart from dire necessity — and 
one in dire necessity is not fit to enter into com- 
U'lercial exchanges — the rule is, that a seller may 



OF USURY. 



^57 



alwa3's ask the market value of his article, however 
much that may be above what the thing cost him, 
or the use value which it bears to him. Thus, if one 
finds in his garden a rare Roman coin — so far as his 
tastes go, a paltry bit of metal — he may sell it for 
whatever price numismatists will offer : whereas, 
if there were no market for coins, but only one indi- 
vidual who doted on such things, the finder could 
make no profit out of that individual, the coin 
having neither market value with the community, 
nor use value in the eyes of the finder. 

5. As there is a twofold value, and a twofold 
exchange, so a twofold character is impressed on 
the great instrument of exchange, money. Money, 
in one character, is an instrument of private ex- 
change : in its other character, to mercantile men 
more familiar, it is an instrument of commercial 
exchange. In the one, it represents use value to the 
particular owner, more or less to him than it would 
be to some other owner : in the other, it represents 
market value, the same to all at the same time. 

6. Leo X. in the Fifth Council of Lateran, 
1515, ruled that — " usury is properly interpreted ^o 
be the attempt to draw profit and increment, with- 
out labour, without cost, and without risk, out of 
the use of a thing that does not fructify." In 1745 
Benedict XIV. wrote in the same sense to the 
Bishops of Italy ; " That kind of sin which is called 
usury, and which has its proper seat and place in 
the contract of miihmin, consists in turning that 
contract, which of its own nature requires the 
amount returned exactly to balance the amouni 

R 



OF RIGHTS. 



received, into a ground for demanding a return in 
excess of the amount received." Mutuum, be it 
observed, is a loan for a definite period, of some 
article, the use of which lies in its consumption, as 
matches, fuel, food, and, in one respect, money. 
We shall prove this to be properly a gratuitous 
contract, (s. iv., n. 4, p. 254.) 

7. Usury then is no mere taking of exorbitant 
interest. There is no question of more or less, 
but it is usury to take any interest at all upon the 
loan of a piece of property, which 

{a) is of no use except to be used up, spent, 
consumed : 

(6) is not wanted for the lender's own consump- 
tion within the period of the loan : 

(c) is lent upon security that obviates risk: 
{d) is so lent that the lender foregoes no occasion 
of lawful gain by lending it. 

8. When all these four conditions are fulfilled, 
and yet interest is exacted upon a loan, such interest 
is usurious and unjust. And why? Simply by 
reason of the principle that we laid down before, 
speaking of private exchange (n. 3), a principle that 
is th-us stated by St. Thomas : 

If one party is much benefited by the com- 
modity which he receives of the other, while the 
other, the seller, is not a loser by going without the 
article, no extra price must be put on. The reason 
is, because the benefit that accrues to one party is 
not from the seller, but from the condition of the 
buyer. Now no one ought to sell to another that 
which is not his, though he may sell the loss that he 



OF USURY. 



a59 



suffers. He, however, who is much benefited by 
the commodity he receives of another, may spon- 
taneously bestow some extra recompense on the 
seiler ; that is the part of one who has the feelings 
of a gentleman." (2a 2se, q. 77, art. i, in corp.) 

9. St. Thomas speaks of sales, but the principle 
applies equally to loans. It is upon loans of money 
that interest is commonly taken, and of money-loans 
we speak. Clearly, according to the doctrine stated, 
the lender can claim the compensation of interest, 
if he has to pinch himself in order to lend, or lends 
at a notable risk. He is selling his own loss, — or 
risk, which is loss once removed. But supposing he 
has other monies in hand, and the security is good, 
and he has enough still left for all domestic needs, 
and for all luxuries that he cares to indulge in, — 
moreover he has nothing absolutely to do with his 
money, in the event of his not lending it, but to 
hoard it up in his strong box, and wait long months 
till he has occasion to use it : in that case, if he 
lends it he will be no worse off on the day that he 
gets it back, no worse off in the time while it is 
away, than if it had never left his coffers. Such is 
the contract of mutuuni, shorn of all accidental 
attendant circumstances, a contract, which " of its 
own nature," as Benedict XIV. says, that is, apart 
from circumstances, requires the amount returned 
exactly to balance the amount received." Not though 
the borrower has profited of the loan to gain king- 
doms, is any further return in strict justice to be 
exacted of him on that precise account. 

10. But now an altered case. Suppose land is 



OF RIGHTS, 



purchaseable, and it is proposed to stock a farm 
with cattle, and rear them, and convey them to a 
large town where there is a brisk demand for meat — 
the supposition is not always verified, nor any sup- 
position like it, but suppose it verified in some one 
case— then, though the lender has other monies in 
hand for the needs of his household, and the 
security is good, yet the money is not so lent as 
that he foregoes no occasion of lawful gain by 
lending it. He foregoes the purchase of land and 
farm stock, or at least delays it, and delay is loss 
where profit is perennial. On that score of gain 
forfeited he may exact interest on the money that he 
lends, which interest will be no usury. The title of 
interest here given is recognized by divines as 
lucrum cessans, " interruption of profit." The interest 
is taken, so far as it goes upon a lawful title, not 
upon the fact of the borrower's profit — that is 
irrelevant — but upon the profit that the lender 
might have made, had he kept the money in hand. 

II. This latter case (n. lo) represents that putting 
of money out to interest, which is an essential feature 
of modern commerce. The former case (n. 9) is the 
aspect that money-lending commonly bore in the 
Middle Ages. In those days land was hard to buy, 
agriculture backward, roads bad, seas unnavigable, 
carrying-trade precarious, messages slow, raids and 
marauders frequent, population sparse, commerce 
confined to a few centres, mines unworked, manu- 
factures mostly domestic, capital yet unformed. 
Men kept their money in their cellars, or deposited 
it for safety in religious houses: whence the stories 



OF USURY. 



26Z 



of treasure-trove belonging to those days. They 
took out the coin as they wanted it to spend on 
housekeeping, or on war, or feasting. It was very 
hard, next to impossible, to lay out money so as to 
make more money by it. Money was in those days 
really barren — a resource for housekeeping, not for 
trade — a medium of private, not of commercial ex- 
change — a representative of use value, not of market 
value. Apart from risk of non-repayment, to take 
interest for m.oney that you had no use for but to 
hoard, was getting breed of barren metal:" it 
was taking up what you laid not down : it was 
making profit out of your neighbour's need, or your 
neighbour's gain, where there was no corresponding 
need unsatisfied, or gain forfeited, on your part : it 
was that " attempt to draw profit and increment, 
without labour, without cost, and without risk, out 
of the use of a thing that does not fructify," which 
the Fifth Lateran Council defines to be usury. 

12. In our time, thanks to steam and electricity, 
the increase of population, and continued peace, the 
whole world has become one trading community, 
representing now more, now less abundant opportu- 
nities for the investment of money, and the conver- 
sion of it into other lucrc.tive commodities. Money 
consequently with us is not a mere medium of 
orivate exchange for the purposes of housekeeping : 
it is a medium of commercial exchange. It repre- 
sents, not use value, but market value. To be a 
thousand pounds out of pocket for a year means an 
opportunity of gain irretrievably lost, gain that could 
have been made otherwise than by money-lending. 



S62 



OP RIGHTS. 



Where this is so, and so far as it is so, the lender 
may without violation of justice point to lucrum 
cessans, gain lost, and arrange beforehand with the 
borrower for being reimbursed with interest. 

13. The transition from mediaeval housekeeping, 
with its use values and private exchange, to the 
mercantile society of modern times, was not made 
in a day, nor went on everywhere at the same rate. 
It was a growth of ages. In great cities commerce 
rapidly ripened, and was well on towards maturity 
five centuries ago. Then the conditions that render 
interest lawful, and mark it off from usury, readily 
came to obtain. But those centres were isolated. 
Like the centres of ossification, which appear here 
and there in cartilage when it is being converted 
into bone, they were separated one from another by 
large tracts remaining in the primitive condition. 
Here you might have a great city, Hamburg or 
Genoa, an early type of commercial enterprise, and, 
fifty miles inland, society was in its infancy, and the 
great city w^as as part of another w^orld. Hence the 
same transaction, as described by the letter of the 
law, might mean lawful interest in the city, and 
usury out in the country — the two were so discon- 
nected. In such a situation the legislator has to 
choose between forbidding interest here and allowing 
usury there ; between restraining speculation and 
licensing oppression. The mediaeval legislator chose 
the former alternative. Church and State together 
enacted a number of laws to restrain the taking of 
interest, laws that, like the clothes of infancy, are 
not to be scorned as absurd restrictions, merely 



INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE. 263 



because they are inapplicable now, and would not 
fit the modern growth of nations. At this day the 
State has repealed those laws, and the Church has 
officially signified that she no longer insists on them. 
Still she maintains dogmatically that there is such 
a sin as usury, and what it is, as defined in the 
Fifth Council of Lateran. 

Readings. — St. Thos., 2a 2se, q. 77, art. i ; Ar., 
Pol., I., ix. ; St. Thos., 2a 28e, q. 77, art. 4 ; The Month 
for September, 1886 ; The Nineteenth Century for 
September, 1877, pp. 181, seq. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF MARRIAGE. 

Section. I — Of the Institution of Marriage. 

I. Marriage is defined by the C3.nomsts : the tmi on 
of male and female, involving their living together in 
undivided intercourse. In the present order of Provi- 
dence, the marriage contract between baptized 
persons is a sacrament, under the superintendence 
of the Church, the fertile theme of canonists and 
theologians. As philosophers, we deal with marriage 
as it would be, were there no sacraments, no Church, 
and no Incarnation, present or to come. This is 
marriage in the order of pure nature. 

2. It is natural to all animals to propagate their 
kind, natural therefore also to man ; and being 
natural, it is so far forth also a good thin^, unless 



264 



OF MARRIAGE. 



we are to say with the Manicheans, that the whole 
of corporeal nature is an evil creation. Nay, so 
urgent is the natural appetite here, that we must 
argue the existence, not of a mere permission, but of 
an exigency of nature, and consequent command of 
God {Eihics, c. vi., s. ii., nn. ii, 12, p. 122), for the pro- 
pagation of the human species. Besides, there is in 
the individual the duty of self-preservation, therefore 
likewise in the race. Again, the old cannot subsist 
at ail without the support of the young, nor lead a 
cheerful existence without their company. Imagine 
a world with no youth in it, a winter without a 
spring ! 

3. There is this difference between self-preserva- 
tion and the preservation of the race, that if a man 
will not eat, none can eat for him ; but if one man 
omit the propagation of his kind, another can take 
it up. There are many things necessary for the 
good of mankind, which are not to be done by every 
individual. Not all are to be soldiers, nor all builders, 
though houses are needful, and sometimes war. Nor 
is it desirable that the human race should be multi- 
plied to its utmost capacity. It is enough here to 
mention without discussing the teaching of Malthus, 
how population presses on the means of subsistence, 
the latter increasing in an arithmetical, the former 
in a geometrical ratio. Without going the whole 
way with Malthus, modern economical writers are 
commonly a little Malthusian, and shrink from giving 
to all and each of their species the word to " increase 
?.nd multiply." 

4. But, it will be said, sickly and consumptive 



/NSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE. 



265 



subjects, and still more those who have any tendency 
to madness, may well be excused from having 
children ; so too may they be excused whose poverty 
cannot keep a family ; excused too is the inveterate 
drunkard, and all habitual criminals, by the principle 
of heredity, lest they transmit to posterity an evil 
bodily predisposition ; but the healthy and the 
virtuous, men sound of mind and limb, of life un- 
spotted, and in circumstances easy, the flower of 
the race, — none of these surely should omit to raise 
up others to wear His lineaments : we want such 
men multiplied. I answer, on natural grounds 
alone ; You may counsel, but you cannot compel, 
either by positive law or ethical precept, any man 
or woman to seek to have children. You surely will 
not breed men by selection, like cattle, as Plato 
proposed. The union of the sexes, especially the 
married union, is an act to be of all others the most 
entirely free, spontaneous, uncommanded, and un- 
constrained. It should be a union of intense mutual 
love. But a man may not meet v/ith any woman 
that he can love with passion ; or, meeting such, he 
may not be able to win her. Nor, considering the 
indeterminateness of points of health, capacity, and 
character, could any certain list be drawn up of 
persons bound to have issue. Thus the utmost that 
can be argued is a counsel in this direction, a counsel 
that mankind ordinarily are ready enough to comply 
with. But if any one of seeming aptitude excuses 
himself on the score of finding no partner to his 
liking, or of a desire to travel, or of study, or still 
more, of devotion — and why should not a man, even 



266 



OF MARRIAGE. 



of natural piety, go out into solitude, like St. Antony, 
to hold communion with his Maker ? — all these 
excuses must be taken. It is lawful then in the 
state of mere nature, upon any one of many sufficient 
grounds, to stand aside and relinquish to your neigh- 
bour the privilege and responsibility of giving in- 
crease to the human family. 

5. But if it is no one individual's duty to propa- 
gate his kind, how is it that we have laid down that 
there is such a duty ? For the duty is incumbent 
upon them that alone can do it, and it can only be 
done by individuals. The answer rests on a dis- 
tinction between proximate and remote duty. The 
propagation of the race is the remote duty of every 
individual, but at present the proximate duty of 
none. A remote duty is a duty not now pressing 
but which would have to be performed in a certain 
contingency, which contingency happening, the duty 
becomes proximate. If there appeared a danger of 
our race dying out, the survivors would be beholden, 
especially those in power, to take steps for its con- 
tinuance. Rewards might then be held out, like the 
jus trium liberorum instituted at Rome by Augustus ; 
and if necessary, penalties inflicted on celibacy. In 
this one extreme case the matrimonial union might 
be made matter of legal constraint. But when will 
such constraint become necessary ? 

6. The continuance of the human race must be 
wrought out by man and woman standing in that 
abiding and exclusive relation to one another, which 
constitutes the state of marriage. Nature abhors 
promiscuity, or free love. It is the delight of writer^ 



INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE. 



267 



who use, perhaps abuse, Darwin's name, to picture 
primitive mankind as all living in this infrabestial 
state. But "the state supposed is suicidal, and 
instead of allowing the expansion of the human race, 
would have produced infertility, and probably dis- 
ease, and at best only allowed the existing numbers 
to maintain, under the most favourable circum- 
stances, a precarious existence. To suppose, there- 
fore, that the whole human race for any considerable 
time were without regular marriage, is physiologically 
impossible. They could never have survived it.'' 
(Devas, Studies of Family Life, § loi.) 

7. Even if the alleged promiscuity ever did 
prevail — and it may have obtained to some extent 
in certain degraded portions of humanity — its preva- 
lence was not its justification. The practice cannot 
have been befitting in any stage of the evolution of 
human society. As in all things we suppose our 
readers to have understanding, we leave it to them 
to think out this matter for themselves. Suffice it 
here to put forward two grand advantages gained 
and ends achieved, which are called by theologians 
" the goods of marriage." 

8. The first good of marriage is the offspring that 
is born of it. Nature wills, not only the being, but 
the well-being of this offspring, and that both in the 
physical and in the moral order. Very important 
for the physical health of the child it is, that it be 
born of parents whose animal propensities are under 
some restraint ; such restraint the bond of marriage 
implies. Then, in the moral order, the child requires 
to be educated with love, a love that shall be guided 



268 



OF MARRIAGE. 



by wisdom, and supported by firmness. Love, 
wisdom, and firmness, they are the attributes of 
both parents ; but love is especially looked for from 
the mother, wisdom and firmness from the father. 
And, what is important, both have an interest in the 
child such as no other human being can take. We 
are speaking of the normal father or mother, not of 
many worthless parents that actually are ; for, a^ 
Aristotle often lays it down, we must not judge of a 
thing from its bad specimens. No doubt, the State 
could establish public nurseries and infant schools, 
and provide a staff of nurses and governesses, more 
scientific educators than even the normal parent ; 
but who, that has not been most unhappy in his 
origin, would wish his own infancy to have been 
reared in such a place ? What certificated stranger 
can supply for a mother's love ? 

9. The second good of marriage is the mutual 
faith of the partners. Plato never made a greater 
mistake than when he wrote that "the female sex 
differs from the male in mankind only in this, that 
the one bears children, v/hile the other begets them ; " 
and consequently that no occupation of social life 
belongs to a woman because she is a woman, or to 
a man because he is a man, but capacities are equally 
distributed in both sexes, and woman naturally bears 
her share in all occupations, and man his share, only 
that in all woman is weaker than man." {Republic, 
454 d; 455 D.) Over against this we must set 
Aristotle's correction : " Cohabitation among human 
kind is not for the mere raising of children, but also 
for the purposes of a partnership in life : for from the 



INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE. 2bg 

first the offices of man and woman are distinct and 
different : thus they mutually supply for one another, 
putting their several advantages into the common 
stock." (An, Eth., VIII., xii. 7.) Elsewhere he sets 
forth these several offices in detail : " The nature 
of both partners, man and woman, has been pre- 
arranged by a divine dispensation in view of their 
partnership : for they differ by not having their facul- 
ties available all to the same effect, but some even to 
opposite effects, though combining to a common end : 
for God made the one sex stronger and the other 
weaker, that the one for fear may be the more careful, 
and the other for courage the more capable of self- 
defence ; and that the one may forage abroad, while 
the other keeps house: and for work the one is made 
competent for sedentary employments, but too 
delicate for an out-door life, while the other makes 
a poor figure at keeping still, but is vigorous and 
robust in movement ; and touching children, the 
generation is special, but the improvement of the 
children is the joint labour of both parents, for 
it belongs to the one to nurture, to the other to 
chastise." (Ar., Econ., i. 3.) 

These pass'ages are enough to suggest more than 
they actually contain, of two orders of qualities 
arranged antithetically one over against another in 
man and woman, so that the one existence becomes 
complementary to the other, and the two conjoined 
form one perfect human life. This life-communion, 
called by divines fides, or mutual faith, is then the 
second gcod fruit of marriage. Indeed it is the more 
characteristically human good, offspring being rather 



OF MARRIAGE. 



related to the animal side of our nature. But as 
animal and rational elements make one human 
being, so do offspring and mutual faith constitute the 
adequate good of that human union of the sexes, 
which we call marriage. 

10. Whatever good there is in marriage, connec- 
tions formed by either party beyond the marriage- 
bed, are agents of confusion to the undoing of all 
that good and the practical dissolution of the 
marriage. 

Readings, — Contra Gentes, iii., 122; ih., iii., 126; 
ib,, iii., 136; Devas, Studies of Family Life, §§ go — loi, 
where he disposes of the proof of primitive pro- 
miscuity, drawn from the fact that in early societies 
kinship is traced and property claimed only through 
the mother. 

Section II. — Of the Unity of Marriage. 

1. Both man and woman are by nature incapable of a 
second marriage, while their former marriage endures. 
No woman can have two husbands at the same time, 
which is polyandry ; and no man can have two wives 
at the same time, which is polygamy. The second 
marriage attempted is not only illicit, but invalid : 
it is no contract, no marriage at all, and all cohabita- 
tion with the second partner is sheer adultery. This 
is a great deal more than saying that polyandry and 
polygamy are unlawful. 

2. That is by nature no marriage, which is in- 
consistent with the natural ends of marriage, offspring 
and mutual faith. But polyandry is thus inconsistent 
with the good of offspring, and polygamy with mutual 



UNITY OF MARRIAGE. 



faith. It is not meant that polyandry makes the 
birth of children impossible. But nature is solicitous, 
not for the mere birth, but for the rearing and good 
estate of the child born. Now a child born father- 
less is in an ill plight for its future education. 
Posthumous children in lawful wedlock are born 
fatherless : that is a calamity : but what shall we 
think of an institution which makes that calamity to 
the child sure always to occur ? Such an institution 
is polyandry. For in it no man can ever know his 
own child, except by likeness, and likeness in a baby 
face is largely as you choose to fancy it. Again, is 
the polyandrous wife to be, or not to be, the head of 
the family ? If not, the family — for it ought to be 
one family, where there is one mother — will have as 
many heads as she has husbands, a pretty specimen 
of a house divided against itself. If she is to be 
the head, that is a perversion of the natural order 
of predominance between the sexes. In any case, 
polyandry is little better than promiscuity : it is fatal 
to the family and fatal to the race; and children 
born of it are born out of marriage. 

3. Against polygamy the case in natural law is 
not quite so strong as against polyandry. Still it is 
a strong case enough in the interest of the wife. The 
words spoken by the bride to the bridegroom in the 
marriage rite of ancient Rome, Ubi tu Caius, ego 
Caia, "Where you are master, I am mistress," 
declare the relation of mutual faith as it should be, 
namely, a relation of equality, with some advantage, 
preference, and pre-eminence allowed to the hus- 
band, yet not so great advantage as to leave him 



OF MARRIAGE. 



free where she is straitly bound, and reduce her to 
the servile level of one in a row of minions to 
his passion and sharers of his divided affections. 
Polygamy in all ages has meant the lowering of 
womankind : 

He will hold thee— 

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse 

At its strongest, the love of man for woman, 
where polygamy obtains, is a flame of passion, that 
quickly spends itself on one object, and then passe? 
to another; not a rational, enduring, human affection. 
It is also a fact, that the increase of the race is not 
greater in polygamy than in monogamy. Thus, as 
a practice that runs strongly counter to one of the 
great purposes of marriage, and is, to say the least, 
no help to the other, and carries with it the 
humiliation of the female sex, polygamy is justly 
argued to be abhorrent to nature. 

4. It is beside the purpose of this work to enter 
into the questions of morality that arise out of Holy 
Scripture, considered as an inspired record of the 
actions of the Saints. But the polygamy of the 
patriarchs of old so readily occurs to mind, that it 
is worth while to mention four conceivable explana- 
tions, if only to indicate which is and which is not 
reconcilable with our philosophy. The first explana- 
tion would be, that polygamy is not against the 
natural law, but only against the positive divine law, 
which was derogated from in this instance. We 
have made it out to be against the natural law. The 
second explanation would be that God gave the 



UNITY OF MARRIAGE. 



273 



patriarchs a dispensation, strictly so called, from 
this point of the natural law. We have maintained 
that God cannot, strictly speaking, dispense from 
one jot or tittle of natural law. {EthicSy c. viii., s. iii., 
nn. I — 3, p. 147.)^ A third explanation would be 
founded on the words of St. Paul to the Athenians 
I'Acts xvii. 30), about " God overlooking the times of 
this ignorance." This would suppose that mankind, 
beginning in monogamy, from passion and ignorance 
lapsed quickly into polygamy : that the patriarchs 
in good faith conformed to the practice of their time; 
and that God, in their case as with the rest of man- 
kind, awaited His own destined hour for the light of 
better knowledge to break upon the earth. A fourth 
explanation would be this. God by His supreme 
dominion can dissolve any marriage. By the same 
dominative power He can infringe and partially 
make void any marriage contract without entirely 
undoing it. The marriage contract, existing in its 
fulness and integrity, is a bar to any second similar 
contract, as we have proved. But what, on this 
theory, the Lord God did with the marriages of the 
patriarchs was this : He partially unravelled and 
undid the contract, so as to leave room for a 
second contract, and a third, each having the bare 
essentials of a marriage, but none of them the full 
integrity. 

^ Dispensatio is the Latin for oiKovofxla, and in this case means an 
' economy ' of law, in the sense that God did not press the marriage 
law beyond the capacity of the subject (Matt. xix. 7,8). See my 
Newman Index, s.v. Economy. The schoolmen missed this mean- 
ing, and took dispensatio in the canonical sense. 
S 



274 



OF MARRIAGE. 



But, for the author's final view, see Appendix. 

Readings, — Contra Gent,, lii., 124; Suarez, Di 
Legihus, II., XV., 28. 

Section III. — Of the Indissohhility of Marriage. 

I. This section is pointed not so much against a 
separation — which may take place by mutual consent, 
or without that, by grievous infidelity or cruelty of 
one party — as against a divorce a vinculo, which is 
a dissolution of a marriage in the lifetime of the 
parties, enabling each of them validly and lawfully 
to contract with some other. The unity of marriage 
is more essential than its indissolubihty. Nature is 
more against polygamy than against divorce. Even 
Henry VIII. stuck at polygamy. In the present 
arrangement, a divorce a vinculo is obtainable in 
three cases. First, when of two unbaptized persons, 
man and wife, the one is converted, and the uncon- 
verted party refuses to live peaceably in wedlock, the 
convert may marry again, and thereupon also the 
other party. So the Church understands St. Paul, 
I Cor. vii. 13, 15. Again, the Pope can grant a 
divorce a vinculo in the marriage of baptized persons 
before cohabitation. Such a marriage in that stage 
is also dissolved by the profession o^ one of the 
parties in a religious order. Beyond these three 
cases, the Catholic Church allows neither the lawful- 
ness nor the validity of any divorce a vinculo by 
whomsoever given to whatsoever parties. 



INDISSOLUBILITY OF MARRIAGE. 



275 



2. It is ours to investigate the lie of the law of 
nature, having due regard to the points marked, 
antecedently to our search, by the definition of in- 
falHble authority. Nothing can be done in the 
Church against the law of nature : since therefore 
divorce a vinculo is sometimes recognized in the 
Church, it may be contended that marriage is not 
by nature absolutely indissoluble. On the other 
hand, it is a proposition censured by Pius IX. in the 
Syllabus, n. 67 ; By the law of nature the bond of 
marriage is not indissoluble." Thus it appears we 
must teach that marriage is naturally indissoluble, 
still not absolutely so, just as a safe is justly ad- 
vertised as fire-proof, when it will resist any con- 
flagration that is likely to occur, though it would be 
consumed in a blast-furnace or in a volcano. So 
marriage is indissoluble, if it holds good for all 
ordinary contingencies, for all difficulties that may 
be fairly reckoned with and regarded as not quite 
improbable, for every posture of affairs that the con- 
tracting parties before their union need at all consider. 
Or, if the three cases of divorce actually allowed are 
to be traced to the dominative power of God {Ethics^ 
c. vii., n. 2, p. 129), we may teach that marriage is 
by nature absolutely indissoluble, and that divorce 
is as much against the law of nature as the kiUing of 
an innocent man, excepting in the case of God's 
dominion being employed to quash the contract or 
the right to life. But against this latter view is to 
be set the consideration, that God is manifestly 
averse to using His dominative power to overturn 
natural ordinances. He does not hand the innocent 



GF MARRIAGE. 



over to death except in the due course of physical 
nature : why then should He ever put forth His 
power against the marriage-tie, unless it be that 
nature herself in certain cases postulates its sever- 
ance? But if such is ever nature's petition, the 
universal and unconditional permanence of the 
marriage-tie cannot be a requisition of nature, nor 
is divorce absolutely excluded by natural law. 

3. Thomas Sanchez, than whom there is no 
greater authority on this subject, records his opinion 
that " a certain inseparability is of the nature of 
marriage," but that " absolute indissolubility does 
not attach to marriage by the law of nature." He 
adds : if we consider marriage as it is an office of 
nature for the propagation of the race, it is hard to 
render a reason why for the wife's barrenness the 
husband should not be allowed to put her away, or 
marry another." {De Matrimonio, 1. ii., d. 13, n. 7.) 
We proceed to prove that a certain inseparability 
is of the nature of marriage," so that marriage may 
truly be said to be indissoluble by the law of nature. 
Whether this natural indissolubility is absolute, and 
holds for every conceivable contingency, the student 
must judge by the proofs. 

4. If a divorce a vinculo v/ere a visible object 
on the matrimonial horizon, the parties would be 
strongly encouraged thereby to form illicit con- 
nections, in the expectation of shortly having any 
one of them they chose ratified and sanctified by 
marriage. Marriage would be entered upon lightly, 
as a thing easily done and readily undone, a state 
of things not very far in advance of ^promiscuity. 



INDISSOLUBILITY OF MARRIAGE. 



Between married persons little wounds would fester, 
trifling sores would be angered into ulcers : any 
petty strife might lead to a fresh contract, made in 
haste and repented of with speed : then fond, vain 
regrets for the former partnership. Affinity would 
be a loose bond of friendship between families ; and 
after divorce it would turn to enmity. The fair but 
weaker sex would suffer the more by this as by all 
other matrimonial perversions : for the man has not 
so much difficulty in lighting upon another love, but 
the woman — she illustrates the Greek proverb of 
a fallen estate : 

Mighty was Miletus in the bygone days of yore. 

The divorced wife offers fewer attractions than the 
widow. 

5. It is well to bear in mind that, at least by 
the positive ordinance of God in the present order 
of His Providence, the marriage of baptized persons, 
after cohabitation, is absolutely indissoluble ; and 
no marriage can be dissolved except in the three 
cases specified, (n. i.) 

Readmgs. — Leo XIII., Encyclical on Christian 
Marriage, Arcanum divince sapiential; St. Thomas, 
Contra Gcnt.^ iii., 12.^, 



CHAPTER VII. 



OF PROPERTY. 

Section I. — Of Private Property . 

I. Property was called by the Romans res janii- 
Harts, the stuff and substance of the family. 
Property may be held by the individual for himself 
alone : but any large accumulation of it is commonly 
held by the head of a family, actual or potential, 
for the family ; and he cherishes it for the sake of 
his family as much as, or even more than, for his 
own sake. This is to be borne in mind, for many 
errors in theory and in practice spring from a large 
proprietor figuring as an individual, and not as a 
sort of corporation sole in his capacity of pater- 
familias. 

2. We have seen (c. v., s. i., n. 2, p. 245) how 
man acquires a right over external goods, as it were 
setting the seal of his own personality upon them. 
It appears upon further consideration, that this 
right must extend beyond the mere making things 
your own for immediate use and consumption ; it 
must extend to the storing of things for future and 
perennial use. Otherwise we have Communism. 
Communism allows men to hold property col- 
lectively in a common stock, and allows each 
member of the community to take for his peculiar 



PRIVATE PROPERTY. 



279 



own out of that stock whatever for the moment he 
needs ; but it will not permit him to appropriate 
private means of subsistence against any notable 
time to come. Communism is very good in a family, 
which is an imperfect community, part of a higher 
community, the State. It is very good in a 
monastery, which is like a family : again, very 
good in the primitive Church at Jerusalem, which 
existed for the time on quasi-monastic lines : very 
good even in a perfect community, if such there be, 
of tropical savages, for whom nature supplies all 
things, bananas to eat and palm-leaves to wear, 
without any human labour of production ; but 
very bad and quite unworkable everywhere else. 
St. Thomas, following Aristotle, puts it pithily 
and sufficiently: ''Private property is necessary to 
human hfe for three reasons: first, because every 
one is more careful to look after what belongs to 
himself alone than after what is common to all or to 
many, since all men shun labour and leave to others 
what is matter of joint concern, as happens where 
there are too many servants : on another ground, 
because h?iman affairs are more orderly handled, 
if on each individual there rests his own care 
of managing something, whereas there would be 
nothing but confusion, if every one without dis- 
tinction were to have the disposal of any thing 
he chose to take in hand : thirdly, because by this 
means society is the rather kept at peace, every 
member being content with his own possession, 
whence we see that among those who hold any 
thing in common and undivided ownership strifes 



OF PROPERTY. 



not unfrequently arise." (2a 2se, q. 66, art. 2, in 
corp.) 

3. If any revolutionist yet will have the hardi- 
hood to say with Proudhon, " Property is theft," we 
shall ask him, " From whom ? " He will answer of 
course, " From the community." But that answer 
supposes the community to have flourished, a 
wealthy corporation* before private property began. 
Needless tc say that history knows nothing of such 
a corporation. The saying, that in the beginning all 
things were in common^ is not true in the sense that 
they were positively in common, like the goods of 
a corporation, which are collective property : but 
simply that they were negatively in common, that 
is, not property at all, neither of corporation nor of 
individual, but left in the middle open to all comers, 
for each to convert into property by his occupation, 
and by his labour to enhance and multiply. This 
must be modified by the observation, that the first 
occupants were frequently heads of families, or of 
small clans, and occupied and held for themselves 
and their people. 

4. The saying, that all things are in copimon by the 
law of nature, must be received with still greater 
reserve. Really with as much truth it might be said 
that all men are unmarried, or unclad, or uneducated, 
by the law of nature. Nature unaided by human 
volition provides neither property, nor clothing, nor 
marriage, nor education, for man. But nature bids, 
urges and requires man to bestir his voluntary 
energies for the securing of all these things. The 
law of nature does not prescribe this or that 



PRIVATE PROPERTY. 



281 



particular distribution of goods, as neither does it 
join this man with that woman in marriage, nor 
insist on plaids rather than coats, nor set all boys 
to learn algebra, nor fix a ritual for divine worship ; 
but it insists in the vague upon some worship, some 
education, some clothing, some marriage, and some 
distribution of goods, leaving the determination in 
each case to choice, custom, and positive law, 
human and divine. 

5. All property that can ever be immediately 
serviceable for saving human life, is held under this 
burden, that a perishing fellow-creature, who cannot 
otherwise help himself in a case of extreme need (c. iv., 
n. 8, p. 243), may make such use of the property of 
another as shall suffice to rescue him from perishing 
off-hand. If he draws largely on another for this 
purpose, he ought to make compensation after- 
wards, if he has the means. This has been taken for 
a piece of the primeval rock of Communism cropping 
up from underneath subsequent human formations, 
— quite a mistaken notion. There is no Communism 
whatever in the transaction. Up to the instant 
when the needy man seizes the article that he 
requires to save him from death, that article still 
belongs to the owner from whom he takes it, who 
is bound in charity to give it to the needy party, but 
not in justice. Extreme need does not confer owner- 
ship, nor dispossess any previous owner : but it 
confers the right of taking what is another's as 
though it belonged to no one ; and in the taking, 
the thing passes into the ownership of the new 
occupant, so that for the previous owner forcibly to 



282 



OF PROPERTY. 



resume it would be a violation of justice. English 
law does not recognise this right — properly enough, 
for with us it would be made a plea for much steal- 
ing—but refers the destitute to the parish. The law 
is considerately worked by the magistrates. A 
starving man, who took a loaf off a baker's tray, 
has been known to be sentenced to a few hours' 
imprisonment with two good meals. 

6. As St. Paul says (2 Cor. xii. 14), "parents 
ought to lay up for their children," that they in 
whom their own existence is continued, may not be 
left unprovided for at their decease. The amount 
laid up necessary for this purpose, ought not to be 
diverted from it. Thus much at least Natural Law 
can tell us of the right of inheritance. And con- 
cerning testamentary right these natural considera- 
tions are forthcoming, that it adds to the desirability 
of property, that it secures deference to the wealthy 
in their old age, and that the abolition of it might 
be frustrated by an apparatus of confidential do7ia- 
tiones inter vivos, that is to say, making the property 
over in trust before death. Further enlargement of 
the natural basis of testamentary right may be 
effected by the judicious reader. 

Readings. — Ar., Po/., II., v., nn. i — 16 ; De Lugo, 
De just, et jure, vi., nn. 2 — 6; ih., xvi., nn. 143, 144; 
Locke, Of Civil Government, c.v. ; id., Of Government , 
nn. 88, 89. 

Section II. — Of Private Capital. 

I. Reverting to a former section (c. v., s. v., nn. 
I — 5, p. 255) we lay down this distinction ; Goods held 



PRIVATE CAPITAL. 



283 



for their use vahie are consumer's wealth : goods held 
for their market value are producer's wealthy otherwise 
called capita) . Capital then is that wealth which 
a man holds for the purpose of gaining further 
wealth by means of commercial exchange. It is 
represented by the razors that are made, not to mow 
the manly beard, or youthful moustache, of the 
maker, but, as the Yorkshire vendor put .it, "to 
sell." 

2. Those economists who would allow no private 
ownership of capital, but would have all capital to 
be State property, are called Socialists. They stand 
distinctly apart from the Communists, whom we 
have been labouring to refute in the last section. 
The Communist forbids all private property : the 
Socialist allows private property, but in the shape 
of consumer's wealth alone. The Communist ignores 
the necessity of labour: the Socialist schemes to 
make all men work. The Communist contemplates 
a hand-to-mouth dispensation of all things : the 
Socialist locks all things up, wages in private coffers, 
capital in government stores. The Communist is a 
madman : the speculations of the Sociahst are some- 
times deep. 

3. To what are we to attribute the rise of 
Socialism, and its growth and propagation so fast 
and vigorous, that, its supporters say with some 
colour of evidence, it is a theory destined within a 
measurable space of time to pass into actual 
practice, whether men will or no? The cause is 
not far to seek. There has lighted a plague upon 
all civilized countries, an outbreak fearful and 



284 



OF PROPEBTY. 



severe : only by the great blessing of Providence, 
joined to drastic remedial measures on our part, can 
we cope with the evil. The plague is a cancerous 
formation of- luxury growing out of a root of 
pauperism. It is a disease old as the world, but 
the increase of commerce and intercommunication 
has occasioned its bursting upon our generation in 
a peculiarly virulent, form. And what is more, ours 
being a talking age, the disease is made the staple of 
speeches infinite, and the masses are clamouring for 
a remedy. The remedy proposed is Sociahsm. 

4. Sociahsm in its essence is an attempt to 
transfer to the State, governed by universal suffrage, 
the wealth, and with the wealth the social duties, 
of what have hitherto been the wealthy and govern- 
ing classes. It is not enough for the multitude that 
they are getting the political power out of the hands 
of the landlord and the capitalist : they envy the 
one his broad acres, and the other his investments. 
All must be theirs, sovereignty and wealth alike. If 
wealth has its duties, the people collectively with 
cheerful acceptance v/ill undertake those duties. 
* It shall be ours, not only to be king, but to be 
employer, patron, landlord, educator. We will 
assign to the workman his wages, just and ample 
and perennial : we will adjust production to demand ; 
we will be the restorers of agriculture : we will 
monopolise the carrying-trade : we alone will sell 
whatever shall be sold : we will wash the workman 
in public baths : his taste shall be elevated by our 
statues and pictures, our theatres, our music-halls, 
and our churches ; we will gratify his curiosity with 



PRIVATE CAPITAL. 285 

our news-agencies, feed his thought with our popular 
philosophy, educate his children as our own in our 
primary and secondary schools. Furthermore, we 
will provide the long desiderated career open to 
talents. The stupid boy, though his father was 
our Prime Minister, shall be made a cabin-boy, or 
a scavenger's assistant, an awful example to young 
gentlemen who fail to pass the Government exami- 
nations : while we will pick up, not the gutter 
child, for there shall be no more children in gutters, 
but the son of the woman at the mill, and testing 
him and assigning his career, first by school exami- 
nations, and then by his official performances, we 
will make him in time Poet Laureate or President 
of the Board of Trade, according to the bent of 
his genius.' The astonished workman turns round 
upon the exhibitors of this fairy vision : * And pray 
who are You ? ' * Oh, you, we, the people, all of us 
together. Come put your shoulder to the wheel, 
and up goes our enterprise. Or rather our first 
motion is downwards : down with landlords and 
cotton-lords and lords of parliament, down with 
contractors and stock-jobbers and all who live on 
the interest of their money, and then our honour- 
able multitude will possess and administer and 
govern.' 

5. If angels are to hold the collective ownership 
of capital and the government of men in the Socialist 
Commonwealth ; or if every citizen, retaining in 
his private capacity all the follies and vices that 
human flesh is heir to, shall still be vested in 
angelic attributes, whenever he sits as legislator 01 



286 



OF PROPERTY. 



judge, or acts on the executive of a Socialist com- 
mission, — then this new Commonwealth is likely to 
prove a blessed substitute for the rule of the higher 
classes, which in one way or another has hitherto 
obtained in civilized society. But till angelic 
attributes descend on earth, we shall not find a 
cure for the evils of cities and countries in simply 
doubling the functions of government, and placing 
all sovereign rights, and all the most important of 
proprietory rights and duties, in the hands of a 
numerical majority. 

6. Capital, as we have seen, is a collection of 
market or exchange values in view of further 
exchange. If we call supply S and demand D, 
market value is a social estimate of the fraction ^• 
Another definition has been given : Market value 
is a social estimate of the amount of socially useful 
labour which a given article contains. This second 
definition contains this much of truth in it, that 
directly as the demand for an article, and inversely 
as the supply of the same, is the amount of labour 
which men find it worth their while to spend upon 
that article for commercial purposes. Otherwise 
the definition is unsatisfactory and involved, and 
leads to endless discussion. Without entering into 
these discussions, we will remark an ambiguity in 
the term on which they all roll, the term laboitr^ 
which ambiguity is at the bottom of three fourths 
of the sophistries of popular Socialism. 

7. There were two pillars put at the entrance of 
Solomon's temple, one on the right hand and the 
other on the left : that which was on the right hand 



PRIVATE CAPITAL 



2«9 



he called, according to the Septuagint, Direction^ 
KaropOwcTL^, and that on the left hand, Strength, la-)(y<^, 
(2 Par. iii. 17.) Further we are told that Solomon 
set seventy thousand men to carry burdens on their 
shoulders, and eighty thousand to hew stones in the 
mountains, and three thousand six hundred to be 
overseers of the work of the people. (2 Par. ii. 18.) 
The history is manifest. Strength and Direction 
build the Temple : Strength, or Manual Labour, 
represented by the hodmen and quarrymen, and the 
rest of the hands : " Direction, or Mental Labour, 
represented by the overseers. Yet not by them 
alone : surely we must count in as doers of mental 
labour the designer of the Temple, or at least of its 
decorations, that most wise and skilfal man, my 
father Hiram;" and still more King Solomon him- 
self and David, the two royal minds that originated 
and perfected the idea ; and David's generals, Joab 
and Banaias, who secured the peace that was neces- 
sary as a condition of the building; and innumer- 
able other men of place and power in the nation, 
but for whose thought and prudence the strength of 
the workman would have been thrown away like a 
river poured out in the Libyan desert. From this 
example, eked out with a little thought of his own, 
the reader may estimate the wisdom and credit of 
those who tell factory hands that it is their labour 
which produces all the wealth of their employer, 
and that, in the day when every man shall receive 
his due, the employer shall be made a workmen like 
themselves, and his wealth shall go to the increase 
of their common wages. 



£88 



OF PROPERTY. 



8. Certainly, it will be said, the employer should 
be paid for his mental labour, but why at so enor- 
mously higher a rate than the manual labourers ? 
If we say, ' because his labour is more valuable,' 
some Sociahsts would join issue on the score that 
labour is valuable according to the time that it 
takes, and the employer works shorter hours than 
his men. But this taking account of quantity alone 
in labour is an ignoring of the distinction which we 
have drawn of two qualities or orders of labour, 
mental and manual ; one more valuable than the 
other as being scarcer and in greater demand, so 
that a short time of one may be set against a long 
time of another, like a little gold against a heap of 
brass. Any man accustomed to both orders of 
labour must have observed, that while he can work 
with his hands at almost any time when he is well, 
the highest labour of his intellect can be done only 
at rare intervals, and that in one happy hour he will 
sometimes accomplish more than in a day. As the 
same man differs from himself at different times, so 
does one man from another in the average value of 
his mental efforts : this value is not measured by 
time. 

g. Abandoning this untenable position, Socialists 
still ask : * But is the difference in the value of 
their labour quite so vast as is the interval between 
the profits of the employer and the pay of his poor 
drudges ? ' Honestly we cannot say that it is. We 
are fain to fall back upon the consideration, that 
the employer contributes, not only his brains to the 
work, but his capital. ' Ah, that is just it,' is the 



PRIVATE CAPITAL. 



289 



Socialists' quick reply : * We propose to relieve him 
of his capital, and remunerate his brainwork only : 
by that means we shall be able to pay sufficiently 
handsome wages for m.anagement, according to the 
ratio of mental and manual labour, and at the same 
time have a sufficiently large surplus over to raise the 
wages of his needy comrades, those seventy thousand 
hodmen and eighty thousand quarrymen.' 

10. Two reasons may be given for turning away 
from this seductive proposal, and leaving capital 
(not consumer's wealth merely) in private hands, — 
and that not only in the hands of what we may 
call mentally productive capitalists, men who oversee 
their own enterprises and manage their own work- 
men", but even of tmproductive capitalists, men 
who have shares in and reap profits out of a 
business which they never meddle with. The first 
reason is, because this position of the productive, 
and still more that of the unproductive capitalist, is 
a prize for past industry expended upon production. 
To understand this, we must recollect once more 
that men work, not as individuals, but as heads of 
families. Every working man, from the sailor to 
the shop-boy, covets for himself two things, pay 
and leisure. The same two things do mentally pro- 
ductive labourers covet. But they covet them, not 
for themselves alone, but for their families, and more 
even for their families than for themselves. They 
weary their brains, planning and managing, that in 
old age they may retire on a competence, and hand 
down that same competence, undiminished by their 
having lived on it, to their children. Thus the 

T 



290 



OF PROPERTY. 



young man works and produces, that the old man, 
and the child to come, may have exemption from 
productive labour, an abiding exemption, which 
cannot be unless he is allowed to live on the interest 
of accumulated capital. These positions of affluence 
and rest — sinecures they are, so far as production is 
concerned — are the prizes awarded to the best pro- 
ductive labour. What they who do that labour aim 
at, is not wages but exemption from toil : their wish 
is not so much to be wealthy and have leisure them- 
selves as to found a family in wealth and leisure, — 
the one possible foundation of such a family being 
a store of private capital. Socialists of course will 
offer nobler prizes for the best productive labour, — 
honour, and the satisfaction of having served the 
community, a satisfaction which they would have 
men trained from childhood to relish above all other 
joys. Unfortunately, this taste is yet unformed, and 
the stimulus of these nobler prizes is still unproved 
by experience. Meanwhile men do work hard, to 
the advantage of the community, for the ignobler 
prize of family affluence and ease. Socialists are 
going to take away the good boy's cake and give 
him a sunflower. 

II. The second reason for leaving capital in 
private, even unproductive hands, begins from the 
consideration, that the highest end of man on earth 
is not production, just as it is not consumption, of 
the necessaries and luxuries pf life. Aristotle bids 
us, as much as possible in this life, ''to play the 
immortal (aOavarL^ecv), and do our utmost to live by 
the best element in our nature," that is, the intellect. 



PRIVATE CAPITAL. 



291 



(Ethics, c. ii., s. ii., n. 7, p. 9.) There is the intellectual 
life of the statesman in the practical order : and in 
the speculative order, that of the poet, of the artist, 
of the scholar, of the devout contemplative — the out- 
come of learned and pious leisure, and freedom from 
vulgar cares. One man ascending into this higher 
and better region helps his neighbour to follow. The 
neighbour can follow, even though he be not free 
from productive cares, but the leader ought to be 
free, if he is to soar a high, sustained and powerful 
flight, and guide others aloft. These unproductive 
capitalist families then form what we may call, by 
a figure which rhetoricians call oxynnoron, something 
which comes very near a bull, — we may call them 
an endowed lay-clergy : they are told off from the 
rest of men to lead the way in doing, and causing to 
be done, the highest work of humanity. The absence 
of the First Class of Workers would render the 
Socialist Utopia a very vulgar place. 

12. Nature's ideal is : To all, plenty : to some, 
superabundance. The superabundance of some is 
not necessarily incompatible with all having plenty : 
nay it is a positive furtherance of that and of still 
higher ends, as has been shown. But it is a position 
of advantage that may be abused, and is abused 
most wantonly : hence there comes to be question 
of Socialism. 

13. The Socialism above described is of the old sort, called 
Collectivism. A new variety has appeared, Syndicalism. 
Syndicalism is opposed to nationalisation and centralisation 
of capital and power : it would convert workers into owners 
in each separate department of labour, — colliers to own the 
coal, railvvaymen the lines and rolling-stock, agricultural 
labourers the land, and so on. Collectivism might conceivably 



292 



OF PROPERTY. 



be put in practice, given a sufficiently high standard of social 
virtue, a quality which Socialists are not in the way to get. 
As for Syndicalism in practice, I leave that to the reader to 
imagine. Syndicalism stigmatises Collectivism as a gross 
tyranny. Thus divided into two irreconcilable factions, the 
Sociahsts are not a happy family. 

Readings. — The Creed of Socialism, by Joseph 
Rickaby (Anti-socialist Union, Victoria Street, 
Westminster). 

Section III. — Of Landed Property, 

1. Land, like cotton, timber, or iron-ore, is a 
raw material wrought up by man. Land, like any 
other thing, becomes an article of property originally 
by occupation, and its value is enhanced by labour. 
There is no more reason why all land, or the rents 
of all land, should belong to the State, than why all 
house property, or all house rents, should belong to 
the State. If the people need land to live on, so do 
they need houses to live in, coals to burn, and shoes 
to wear. Socialism, once admitted, cannot be con- 
lined to land alone. It will exterminate the lord 
manufacturer" as remorselessly as it exterminates 
the landlord. 

2. Every man, it is contended, has a right to 
live on the fruits of the soil. The proposition is 
needlessly long. It should be put simply : Every 
man has a right to live. For as to living on the 
fruits of the soil, there is absolutely nothing else 
that man can live on. All human nutriment what- 
ever is derived from what geologists call pulverised 
rocks, that is, soil. But if it is meant that every 
man has a right to live on the fruits of some soil or 
land of his own, where is the proof? So long as 



LANDED PROPERTY. 



293 



the fruits of the earth do not fail to reach a man's 
mouth, what matters it whose earth it is that grows 
them ? Some of the richest as well as the poorest 
members of the community are landless men. Con- 
fiscate rent to take the place of taxation, and some 
of the richest men in the community will go tax-free. 

3. The land on which a nation is settled, we are 
told, belongs to that nation. Yes, it belongs to 
them as individuals, yet not so that a foreigner is 
excluded by natural law from owning any portion of 
it. But the government have over the land, and 
over all the property upon it, what is called altum 
dominiiim, or eminent domain^ which is a power of 
commanding private proprietors to part with their 
property for public purposes, with compensation, 
whenever compensation is possible. Thus when a 
railway gets its Act of Parliament, the owners 
through whose estates the projected line is to run 
are compelled by an exercise of eminent domain to 
sell to the company. By the same power the 
government in a besieged city, v/hen hard pressed, 
might seize upon all the stores of food and fuel 
within the walls, even without compensation. Altum 
dominium, which is not dominion properly so called, 
is sufficient for all national emergencies, without 
making the State the universal landlord. 

4. It seems impossible to imagine an emergency 
that would justify any government in nationalizing 
all the land at once without compensation. None 
but a wealthy government could afford the compen- 
sation requisite ; and the emergency would have to 
be severe indeed, to make it wise of them to incur 



294 OF PROPERTY. 

such an expense. We can imagine a government 
in a newly settled country starting on the under- 
standing that all land was State land, and that all 
ground rents were to be paid into the State ex- 
chequer. This would amount to taking rents for 
taxes ; and instead of a landlord in every district 
we should have a tax-gatherer. Probably further 
taxation would be necessary: in England at any 
rate the annual expenditure exceeds the rental by 
some twenty millions. Governm.ent, we may sup- 
pose, would grant leases of land : when the lease 
fell in, the rent would be raised for unearned incre- 
ment, and lowered for decrement, but not raised 
for improvements effected by the tenant himself. 
In that case the tenant in two or three generations 
might be a quasi-proprietor, his rent being ridicu- 
lously small in comparison with the annual value of 
the holding. The improvements might be the im- 
provements of his grandfather, or even those of a 
complete stranger, from whom he had bought the 
tenancy. Anyhow they might be the better portion 
of the value of the land, and would not be govern- 
ment property. Or would the government insist 
on purchasing the improvements, and look out for a 
new tenant paying a higher rent ? Lastl}', would the 
government themselves make such improvements as 
many an English landlord makes now, for love of 
the country about him and love of his own people ? 

5. It would be most difficult to prevent private 
property arising in land, even if it all did belong to 
the State to start with. " Suppose £10 paid for a 
piece of land for a year, and suppose the occupier 



LANDED PROPERTY. 



295 



said, Let me have it for ten years, and I will give you 
£20 a year, ought not the State to accept the offer ? 
Then suppose he said, Give it me for ever and I will 
P3-y a year? Again, ought not the State to 
agree ? He would then be that hateful creature a 
landowner, subject to a rent-charge. Now suppose 
the State wanted to do work and had to borrow 
money, and suppose he offered to give for the re- 
demption of the rent-charge a sum which could not 
be borrowed for less than ^40 a year. Again, ought 
not the State to accept his offer ? Yet in that case 
he would become a hopelessly unmitigated landlord." 
(Lord Bramwell.) 

6. When there is an alarm of fire in a theatre, 
any one who could convince the audience that there 
was time enough for them all to file out in slow 
succession by the door, would avert the greatest 
danger that threatened them, that of being crushed 
and trampled on by one another. Mankind in pur- 
suit of wealth are like a crowd rushing excitedly 
through a narrow place of exit. Whatever man, or 
body of men, or institution, or doctrine, will moderate 
this "love of money" {(f) ikap^vp La), which. St. Paul 
(i Tim. vi. 10) declares to be the root of all evils," 
the same is a benefactor to the human race, prevent- 
ing that cruel oppression of the poor, which comes 
of ruthlessly buying land, labour, everything, in the 
cheapest market and selling it in the dearest. The 
landlord who always evicts, if he is not paid the 
highest competition rent, — the employer who brings 
in from afar the hands that will work at the lowest 
starvation wage, — these vultures are worse enemies 
to society than Socialists, for they occasion Socialism 



296 



OF PROPERTY. 



7, Socialism, whether in land alone or in all capital, 
is an endeavour to accomplish by State control the 
results that ought to be achieved by private virtue. 
A landlord, or an employer, who remembers his 
position as being what Homer calls a king of men," 
ava^ avSpcov, — remembers too, with Aristotle, that a 
prince exists for his people, — and who, besides a 
quasi-royal care for the body of tenantry or work- 
men over whom he presides, has something too of a 
fatherly interest in every one of them, their persons 
and their families, holding it to be a personal tie 
with himself, to be in his employment or settled upon 
his land, — such a man and the multitude of such men 
form the best bulwark a country can possess against 
Socialism. Such a landlord or employer is a praesens 
numen to his workpeople or tenants. In the absence 
of this protective, personal influence of the rich over 
the poor; in the disorganization of society conse- 
quent upon the misconduct of its subordinate chiefs; 
in the stand-off attitude of the higher classes, and 
the defiant independence of the lower; and in the 
greed of material goods that is common to them 
both, there lurks a danger of unknown magnitude to 
our modern civilization. 

Readini^. — Leo XIII. on the Condition of Labour, 
Encyclical of 15th May, iSgi."^ 

1 " The right of property attaches to things produced by labour, 
but cannot attach to things created by God." So Henry George, 
Condition of Labour, pp. 3, 4. How then do we read in Progress and 
Poverty, bk. 7. ch. i: "The pen with which I am writing is justly 
mine," and that, in the last resort, on account of "the rigb.is 
of those who dug the material from the ground and converted it 
into a pen"? Was not that niaicrial, iron-ore, " created by God," 
equally with any other portion of the earth's crust that we ma) 
please to call land /* 



CHAPTER VIIL 



OF THE STATE. 

Section I. — Of the Monstrosities called Leviathan and Social 
Contract, 

I. Thomas Hobbes, than whom never was greater 
genius for riding an idea, right or wrong, to the full 
length that it will go, was born in 1588 : and not- 
withstanding his twelve pipes of tobacco daily, his 
vigorous constitution endured to his ninety-second 
year. The first half of his life fell in with the age of 
the greatest predominance of Calvinism. In religion 
he was scarcely a Calvinist, indeed he laboured 
under a suspicion of atheism : but his philosophy is 
accurately cast in the mould of the grim theology of 
Geneva. We may call it the philosophy of Calvinism. 
It has for its central tenet, that human nature either 
was from the first, or is become, bad, " desperately 
wicked," depraved, corrupt, and utterly abominable, 
so that whatever is natural to man, in so far forth as 
it is natural, is simply evil. The remedy for our 
evil nature Hobbes finds in no imputed merits of a 
Redeemer, no irresistible victorious grace, but in 
the masterful coercion of a despotic civil power. 
But, lest any one should suspect that there was at 
least this good in man, a propensity to civil society 



298 



OF THE STATE. 



and obedience to the rulers of cities, Hobbes insists 
that man is by nature wholly averse to society with 
his kind : that the type of the race is an Ishmael, " a 
wild man, his hand against all men, and all men's 
hands against him : " in fact that the state of nature 
is a state of war all round. He writes (Leviathan, 
c, xiii.) : Men have no pleasure, but on the contrary 
a great deal of grief, in keeping company where 
there is no power able to overawe them all. For 
every man looketh that his companion should value 
him at the same rate he sets on himself ; and upon 
all signs of contempt or undervaluing naturally en- 
deavours, as far as he dares (which among them that 
have no common power to keep them quiet, is far 
enough to make them destroy each other), to extort 
a greater value from his contemners by damage, 
and from others by the example. . . . Hereby it is 
manifest, that during the time that men live without 
a power to keep them all in awe, they are in that 
condition which is called war, and such a war as 
is of every man against every man. ... In such 
condition there is no place for industry, because the 
fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture 
of the earth : no navigation, nor use of the com- 
modities that may be imported by sea : no com- 
modious building : no instruments of moving and 
removing such things as require much force : no 
knowledge of the face of the earth : no account of 
time : no arts, no letters, no society ; and which is 
worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent 
death ; and the life of' man, solitary, poor, nasty, 
brutish, and short. ... To this war of every man 



LEVIATHAN AND SOCIAL CONTRACT. 295 



against every man this also is consequent, that 
nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and 
wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place. 
Where there is no common power there is no law : 
where no law, no injustice. ... It is consequent 
also to the same condition, that there be no pro- 
priety, no dominion, no mine and thine distinct, but 
only that to be every man's that he can get, and for 
so long as he can keep it." 

2. Such is what Hobbes is pleased to call the 
natural condition of mankind," a condition which 
man would have every natural reason for getting out 
of with all speed, were he ever so unhappy as to fall 
into it. It is true that, apart from civil government, 
violence would reign on earth. But it is not true 
that to live apart from civil government is the natural 
condition of mankind. It is not true that the only 
motive which draws men into civil society is the fear 
of violence, as though there were no such facts and 
exigencies of human nature as sympathy, friendship, 
intellectual curiosity, art, religion. It is not true 
that the one reason for the existence of the civil 
power consists in this, that without the restraining 
hand of the magistrate men v/ould bite and devour 
one another. Lastly, it is not true that all rights, 
notably rights of property, are the creation of the 
State. A m^an is a man first and a citizen after- 
wards. As a man, he has certain rights actual and 
potential (c. v., s. i., p. 244) : these the State exists, not 
to create, for they are prior to it in the order of 
nature, but to determine them, where indeterminate, 
to sanction and to safeguard them. 



3O0 



OF THE STATE. 



Natural rights go before legal rights, and are pre- 
supposed to them, as the law of nature before that 
law which is civil and positive. It is an idol of the 
tribe" of lawyers to ignore all law but that upon 
Vv^hich their own professional action takes its stand. 

3. In considering man as he must have come 
from the hands of nature," writes Jean Jacques 
Rousseau, " I behold an animal less strong than 
some, less active than others, but upon the whole in 
organism having the advantage of them all. I behold 
him appeasing his hunger under an oak, slaking 
his thirst in the first brook, finding a bed at the 
foot of the same tree that furnished his repast, and 
there you have all his cravings satisfied." (Disconrs 
sur Vorigine de VinegalitL) This noble savage — quite 
a contrast to Hobbes's ruffian primeval, nasty, 
brutish," and short-lived — observes and imitates the 
industry, and gradually raises himself to the instinct, 
of the beasts among whom he lives. His constitu- 
tion is robust, and almost inaccessible to malady. 
He attains to old age, free from gout and rheu- 
matism. He surpasses the fiercest wild beasts in 
address as much as they surpass him in strength, 
and so arrives to dwell among them without fear. 
Yet withal he is distinguished from brutes by free- 
will and perfectibilit}^, qualities which gradually draw 
him out of his primeval condition of tranquil inno- 
cence, lead him through a long course of splendours 
and errors, of vices and virtues, and end by making 
him a tyrant at once over nature and over himself. 

4. Rousseau's life, 1715 — 1778, was a continual 
protest against the formalism, affectation, pedantry 



LEVIATHAN AND SOCIAL CONTRACT. 301 



and despotism of the age of the Bourbons. His 
ideal of man was the unconventional, unconstrained, 
soHtary, but harmless and easy-going savage. Hobbes 
was the growth of a sterner and more serious age. 
The only reality to him in heaven and on earth was 
force : his one idea in philosophy was coercion. 
Human nature to him was an embodiment of brute 
violence ever in need of violent restraint. Rousseau, 
an optimist, saw nothing but good in man's original 
nature : to the pessimist mind of Hobbes all was 
evil there. Neither of them saw any natural adapta- 
tion to social life in the human constitution. To 
live in society was, in both their views, an artificial 
arrangement, an arbitrary convention. But Hobbes 
found in the intolerable evils of a state of nature an 
excellent reason why men should quit it for the 
unnatural condition of citizens. Rousseau found 
no reason except, as he says, quelque funeste hasard. 
The problem for Hobbes stood thus : how men, 
entering society, might be " cribbed, cabined, and 
confined " to the utmost in order to keep down 
their native badness. Rousseau's concern was, how 
one might so become a citizen as yet to retain to 
the full the delightful liberty of a tropical savage. 
Hobbes's solution is the Leviatha::, Rousseau's the 
Social Contract. The prize, we think, rests with the 
Englishman : but the reader shall judge. 

5. And first of the Social Contract. Rousseau 
proposes **to find a form of association which shall 
defend and protect with all the strength of the com- 
munity the person and the goods of each associate, 
and whereby each one, uniting himself to all, may 



OF THE STATE. 



nevertheless obey none but himself and remain 
as free as before." {Contrat Social, i. 6.) This 
proposal is hopeless, it is a contradiction in terms. 
No man can contract and remain as free as before, 
but he binds himself either under a wider obligation 
to do or abstain, where he was not bound before, or 
under a stronger obligation where he was bound 
already. Nevertheless Rousseau finds a means of 
accomplishing the impossible and the self-contra- 
dictory. ''Each of us puts into a common stock 
his person and all his power under the supreme 
direction of the general will ; and we receive in our 
turn the offering of the rest, each member as an 
inseparable part of the whole. Instantly, instead 
of the private person of each contracting party, 
this act of association produces a moral and col- 
lective body, composed of as many members as the 
assembly has voices, which body receives by this 
same act its unity, its common Ego, its life and its 
will." (ib.) This awful signing away of all your 
rights, so that your very personality is merged in 
that of the community — a self-renunciation going far 
beyond that of profession in any religious order — 
ought certainly, as Rousseau says, to be " the most 
voluntary act in the world ; " and he adds the 
characteristic reason : " every man being born free 
and master of himself, none can, under any pretence 
whatsoever, subject him wiihout his own consent." 
{Contrat Social, iv. 2.) Then you ask : When have 
I made this large contract by the most voluntary act 
in the world ? Rousseau replies : *' When the State 
is instituted, consent is in residing." {ib.) But, you 



LEVIATHAN AND SOCIAL CONTRACT. 



reply, my residence is anything but the most volun- 
tary act in the world : it would be awkward for me 
to emigrate ; and if I did emigrate, it would only be 
to some other State : I cannot possibly camp out 
and be independent in the woods, nor appease my 
hunger under an oak. To this plea Rousseau quite 
gives in, remarking that family, goods, the want of 
an asylum, necessity, violence, may keep an inhabi- 
tant in the country in spite of himself ; and in that 
case his mere sojourn no longer supposes his consent 
to the contract." (ib.) Then none of us have made 
the contract, for we have never had the option of 
living anywhere except in some State. 

6. Hobbes, after laying down the necessity of 
men combining for protection against mutual in- 
justice, observes that a mere promise or agreement 
not to injure any one vx^ill not suffice : "for the 
agreement of men is by covenant only, which is 
artificial ; and therefore no wonder if there be 
something else required besides covenant to make 
their agreement constant and lasting, which is a 
common power to keep them in awe and to direct 
their actions to the common benefit." He continues: 
The only way to erect such a common power . . . 
is to confer all their power and strength upon one 
man or upon one assembly of men, that may reduce 
all their wills by plurality of voices unto one will : 
which is as much as to say, to appoint one man or 
assembly of men to bear their person ; and every one 
to own, and to acknowledge himself to be the author 
of, whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall 
act or cause lo be acted in those things which con* 



/ 



304 



OF THE STATE. 



cern the common peace and safety ; and therein to 
submit their wills every one to his will, and their 
judgments to his judgment. This is more than 
consent or concord, — it is a real unity of them all 
in one and the same person, made by covenant of 
every man with every man, in such manner as if 
every man should say to every man : I authorise, and 
give up my right of governing myself to this man 
or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that 
thou give up thy right to him, and authorise all his 
actions in like manner. This done, the multitude 
so united in one person is called a commonwealth, in 
Latin civitas. This is the generation of that great 
Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of 
that mortal god, to whom w^e owe under the 
immortal God our peace and defence." (Leviathan, 
c. xvii.) This idea of all the rights and personalities 
of the individuals who contract to live socially being 
fused and welded together into the one resultant 
personality and power of the State, has evidently 
been borrowed by Rousseau from Hobbes. We 
shall deal wdth the idea presently. Meanwhile 
several points claim our notice. 

7. The hideous piece of cynicism whereby Rous- 
seau {Conirat Social, iv. 2), after prom.ising you that, 
if you join his commonwealth, you shall obey none 
but yourself, then goes on to tell 3'ou that you obey 
yourself in obeying the will of the majority, even 
when it puts you in irons or leads you to death — 
because as a citizen you have once for all renounced 
your own will, and can only wish what the majority 
wishes, — has its root in the position of Hobbes, that 



LEVIATHAN AND SOCIAL CONTRACT. 305 



" every subject is author of every act the sovereign 
doth." {Leviathan^ c. xxi.) 

8. A real and important difference between the 
Leviathan and the Social Contract, is that Hobbes 
(c. xix.) allows various distributions of sovereign 
power, but prefers monarchy : Rousseau (1. ii., c. i.) 
will have it that sovereignty is vested inalienably in 
the people : of which doctrine more to follow. 

9. Men are by nature equal, say Rousseau and 
Hobbes and many more respectable authors. Yes, in 
their specific nature, that is, they are all equally men. 
Similarly you have it that all triangles are equal, if 
that is a proposition of any value. But men as 
individuals are not all equal. One is stronger in 
body, another more able in mind : one predisposed 
to virtue, another to vice : one born in affluence 
and honour, another in squalor. Not men in the 
abstract, but living men, start at different points of 
vantage, and the distance between them widens as 
they run the race of life. We may lay it down as 
an axiom, in diametric opposition to Rousseau, that 
inequahties are natural, equalities artificial. 

10. Man is born free : so opens the first chapter 
of the Contrat Social. If free of all duties, then 
void of all rights (c. v., s. i., nn. 5, 7, pp. 246, 247) : 
let him then be promptly knocked on the head as 
a sacrifice to Malthus ; and with the misformed 
children born in Plato's Republic, " they will bury 
him in a secret and unseen spot, as is befitting." 

11. Hobbes and Rousseau go upon this maxim, 
which has overrun the modern world, that no man 
can be bound to obedience to another without his 

U 



3o6 



OF THE STATE. 



own consent. The maxim would be an excellent 
one, were men framed like the categories of Aristotle 
— substance, quantity, quality, relation, and the rest 
- — each peering out of his own pigeon-hole, an inde- 
pendent, self-sufficient entity. But men are depen- 
dent, naturally dependent whether they will or no, 
every human being on certain definite others, — the 
child on the parent, the citizen on the State whose 
protection he enjoys, and all alike on God. These 
natural dependences carry with them natural un- 
covenanted obediences, — to parents, filial duty — to 
country, loyalty — to God, piety : all which are em- 
braced in the Latin term pietas. (See St. Thomas, 
2a 2cT, q. loi, art. i, in corp.) The fatal miaxim 
before us is the annihilation of pietas. In lieu of 
loyal submission we get a contract, a transaction of 
reasoned commercial selfishness between equal and 
equal. This perverse substitution has called forth 
Leo XIIL's remark on the men of our time, 
** Nothing comes so amiss to them as subjection 
and obedience," Nihil tain moleste ferimt quain siibesse 
et parere. (Encyclical on Christian Marriage.) 

12. The common extravagance of the Leviathan 
and the Social Contract is the suppression of the 
individual, with his rights and his very personality, 
which is all blended in the State. (See Rousseau's 
words above quoted, n. 5, and those of Hobbes, 
n. 6.) The reservations in favour of the individual 
made by Hobbes, Leviathan, c. xxi., and by Rous- 
seau, Contrat Social, I. ii., c. iv., are either trifles or 
self-contradictions. But it is not in man's power 
by any contract thus to change his nature, so as to 



AGGREGATION THEORY. 



become from autocentric heterocentric (c. ii., s. i., n. 2^ 
p. 203 ; c. v., s. i., n. i, p. 244), from a person a thing, 
from a man a chattel, void of rights and consequently 
of duties, and bound to serve this Collective Monster, 
this Aggregated Idol, with the absolute devotedness 
that is due to God alone. The worship of the new 
Moloch goes well with the dark misanthropism of 
Hobbes : but in Rousseau, the believer in the perfect 
goodness of unrestrained humanity, it is about the 
most glaring of his many inconsistencies. It is of 
course eagerly taken up by the Socialists, as carrying 
all their conclusions. It is the political aspect of 
Socialism. 

Reading. — Burke, Warren HastingSf Fourth Day, 
the passage beginning, " He have arbitrary power ! " 

Section II. — Of the theory thai civil power is an aggregate 
formed by subscription of the powers of individuals. 

I. The Greeks had a name epavo^, which meant 
a feast where the viands were supplied by each guest 
contributing in kind. If, in a party of four, one 
man brought a ham, another a rabbit, a third a dish 
of truffles, and a fourth a salmon, no one would 
sxpect that, when the cover was raised, there should 
ippear a pigeon-pie. That would not be in the 
tiature of an epavo^. Now not only Hobbes and 
Rousseau, but Locke and a great multitude of 
modern Englishmen with him, hold that the power 
of the State is an aggregate, the algebraic sum of 
the powers whereof the component members would 
have stood possessed, had they lived in what is 
called, by a misleading phrase, "the state of nature," 



3o8 



OF THE STATE. 



that is, the condition of men not subject to civil 
authority. These powers, — either, as Hobbes and 
Rousseau virtually say, all of them, or, as Locke 
and the common opinion has it, only some of them, 
— men are supposed to resign as they enter into 
the State. If therefore there appears in the City, 
Nation, State, or Commonwealth, a certain new and 
peculiar power, which belongs to no individual in 
the "state of nature," or, as I prefer to call it, the 
extra-civil state, then what we may designate as 
the Aggregation Theory breaks down, and another 
origin must be sought of civil principality. But 
there is such a power in the State, new and peculiar, 
and not found in any of the component individuals : 
it is the power and authority to punish on civil 
grounds. It is the right of the rods and axes, that 
were borne before the Roman magistrate. It is, in 
its most crucial form, the right to punish with 
death. 

2. We are not here concerned with proving the 
existence of this right. It is generally admitted : 
we assume it according^, and shall prove it later 
on. Nor are we concerned with domestic punish- 
ment, inflicted by the head of a family within his 
own household, for the good of that household, 
stopping short of any irreparable harm to the sufferer. 
(St. Thos., 2a 236, q. 65, art. 2, ad. 2.) Leaving this 
aside, we say, and have proved already, that one 
private individual has no right to punish another, 
neither medicinally for the amendment of the delin- 
quent, nor by way of deterrent for the good of the 
community, nor in the way of retribution for his own 



AGGREGATION THEORY. 



309 



satisfaction. He has the right of self-defence, but 
not of punishment : the two things are quite 
different. He may also exact restitution, where 
restitution is due : but that again is not punishing. 
If he is in the extra-civil state, he may use force, 
where prudence allows it, to recover what he has 
lost. This right of private war really is surrendered 
by the individual, when the State is established : 
but war and punishment are two totally different 
ideas. Subjects are punished : war is levied on 
independent powers. {Ethics, c. ix., s. iii., nn. 4 — 6, 
pp. 171 — 174 ; Natural Law, c. ii., s. ii., n. 6, p. 212.) 

3. Opposite is the opinion of Locke, who 
writes : 

"The execution of the law of nature \6 in that 
state [of nature] put into every man's hands, whereby 
every one has a right to punish the transgressors of 
that law to such a degree as may hinder its viola- 
tion : for the law of nature would, as all other laws 
that concern men in this world, be in vain, if there 
were nobody that in the state of nature had a power 
to execute that law." We observe that the punish- 
ment of offenders against the law of nature, as such, 
belongs to the Legislator, who is God alone. Cer- 
tainly it is well, nay necessary, that there should be 
human law to bear out the law of nature : but 
human law is the creation of human society in its 
perfection, which is the State. Man is punished by 
man for breaking the laws of man, not — except 
remotely — for breaking the laws of God. Nor 
would it be any inconvenience, if the law of nature 
were in vain in a state wherein nature never intended 



OF THE STATE. 



men to live, wherein no multitude of men ever for 
any notable time have lived, a state which is neither 
actual fact nor ideal perfection, but a mere property 
of the philosophic stage, a broken article, an out- 
worn speculation. Such is **the state of nature," 
as identified with the extra-civil state by Hobbes, 
Locke, and Rousseau. 

Section III. — Of the true state of nature, which is the state 
of civil society ; and consequently of the divine origin cj 
power. 

I, The State is defined by Aristotle {Politics^ 
III., ix., 14): *'the union of septs and villages in 
a complete and self-sufficient life." The first and 
most elementary community is the family, oUia, 
A knot of families associating together, claiming 
blood-relationship and descent, real or fictitious, 
from a common ancestor, whose name they bear, 
constitute a 7eVo?, called in Ireland a sept, in Scot- 
land a clan, nameless in England. When the sept 
come to cluster their habitations, or encampmicnts, 
in one or more spots, and to admit strangers in 
blood to dwell among them, these hamlets, or camps, 
gradually reach the magnitude of a village. When 
a number of these villages, belonging to different 
septs, come to be contiguous to one another, this 
mere juxtaposition does not make of them a State. 
Nor does interchange of commodities, nor inter- 
marriage, nor an offensive and defensive alliance: 
these are the mutual relations of a confederacy, fu/x- 
fiax^cLi but all these and more are needed for a State, 
TToXt?. To be a State, it is requisite that these septs 



DIVINE ORIGIN OF POWER. 



3" 



and villages should agree to regulate the conduct of 
their individual members by a common standard oj 
social virtue, sufficient for their well-being as one 
community. This common standard is fixed by 
common consent, or by the decision of some power 
competent to act for all and to punish dehnquents. 
The name of this common standard is law. (Ethics, 
c. vii., n. I, p. 126.) The community thus formed leads 
a life complete and self-sufficient, not being a member 
of another, but a body by itself, — not part of any 
ulterior community, but complete in the fulness of 
social good and social authority. 

2. Among the ancient Greeks and Italians, and 
to some extent also in mediasval Italy and Germany, 
the city or municipality, with the small country 
district attached, was the State. With us the 
nation is the State ; and accordingly we say my 
country where the Greek said my city. Bearing this 
difference in mind, as also the fact that the sept is 
not known amongst us except to antiquarians, and 
likewise that the village with us coincides with the 
parish, and that there are town as well as country 
parishes, — upon these modern data we may amend 
Aristotle's definition thus : The State is the union oj 
parishes and municipalities in a perfect uiul self-sufficient 
community. 

3. The City State is well illustrated in the follow- 
ing narrative of Thucydides (ii., 15) : 

" In the time of Cecrops and the early kings as 
far as Theseus, Attica was always divided aniung 
several independent cities, with their own town-halls 
and magistrates ; and when there was no alarm of 



312 



OF THE STATS. 



an enemy, the inhabitants did not resort for common 
deliberation to the King, but severally managed 
their own affairs and took their own counsel, and 
some of them even went to war. But when Theseus 
came to the throne, he abolished the council- 
chambers and magistracies of the other cities, and 
centralised all the people in what is now the city [of 
Athens], where he appointed their one council- 
chamber and town-hall; and while they continued 
to occupy their own properties as before, he forced 
them to recognise this as their one city and State." 
Attica before Theseus was a confederacy, ^vfifMaxla, 
not a State, TroXt?. 

4. A citizen is defined : " one who has access to 
a share in deliberative and judicial functions." (Ar., 
Pol. III., i., 12.) It is not necessary that he actually 
should share these functions, but the way to them 
should lie open to him : he should be a person quali- 
fied to share in them. There are various degrees oi 
citizenship. Under a parliamentary government, 
we distinguish the member of parliament, the elector, 
and him who will be an 'elector as soon as he gets a 
house of his own ; and again, the judge, and him 
who is liable to serve on juries. In an absolute 
monarchy there are no citizens, only subjects. 

5. " The distribution of power in the State, and 
especially of the sovereign power, is called the 
polity " {iTo\iT€La, Ar., Pol., III., vi., i), — a word im- 
mortalised by the judicious Hooker, and happily 
recovered recently to the English language. The 
polity then is the distribution of the sovereignty. 
The person, singular or collective, in whose hands 



DIVINE ORIGIN OF POWER. 



313 



the full sovereignty rests, is called the ruler. Be it 
observed that what we call the ruler is never one 
man, except in absolute monarchy. By the theory 
of the British Constitution, the ruler is King, Lords, 
and Commons, together. 

6. Nature requires that men generally live in society , 
domestic and civil, so that the individual be of the family, 
and families form associatio7ts, which again conspire to 
form one perfect commtmity , which is the State. The 
requirement of nature may be gathered from the 
universal practice of mankind. " If it (the word 
savage) means people without a settled form of 
government, without laws and without a religion, 
then, go where you like, you will not find such a 
race." (Max Miiller, in Nineteenth Centtiry, Jan. 1885, 
p. 114.) The same may be gathered from a con- 
sideration of what the State is, and of the ends 
which it serves. The State, as we have seen (n. 2), 
is a union of septs and villages, or of parishes 
and municipalities. The individual is born and 
nurtured in the family, and ordinarily becomes 
in time the parent of a new family. Families 
must combine to form septs by blood, or villages 
(or parishes) by locality. Municipalities we may 
leave aside, for a municipality is a potential State, 
But we must consider the sept, village, or parish, 
which is the community intermediate between family 
and State. Among the cogent reasons which require 
families to enter into this association, we may 
mention friendship, intermarriage, the interchange 
of services and commodities, the cultivation of the 
arts, the preservation of traditions and inventions. 



314 



OF THE STATE. 



7. But it is further necessary that these septs, 
villages, or parishes, should band together and corn- 
bine to form a higher community, self-sufficient and 
perfect, — for the determining of rights which Natural 
Law leaves undetermined, — for the punishing of 
disturbers of the peace, if need be, even with death, 
—for defence against a common enemy, — for a union 
of counsels and resources to the execution of magni- 
ficent works. This self-sufficient and perfect com- 
munity, which is not part of any higher community, 
is the State. 

8. We may observe that the whole reason for 
the being of the State is not mutual need, nor the 
repression of violence. Main reasons these are, no 
doubt, but not the whole main reason. Even if men 
had no need of one another for the supply of their 
animal wants, they would still desire to converse for 
the satisfaction of their intellectual curiosity and 
their social affections. And even if we had all re- 
mained as void of guile, and as full of light and love, 
as our first parents were at their creation, we should 
still have needed the erection of States. In a State 
there are not only criminal but civil courts, where it 
is not wicked men alone who come to be litigants. 
From sundry passages of Scripture it would appear 
that even angels may disagree as to what is best and 
proper : angelic men certainly may and do. It is 
a mistake to look upon civil government, with its 
apparatus of laws and judgments, simply as a neces- 
sary evil, and remedy of the perverseness of man- 
kind. On the contrary, were all men virtuous, 
States would still be formed, towering in magni- 



DIVINE ORIGIN OF POWER. 



315 



ficence above the States known to history, as the 
cedars of Lebanon above the scanty growths of a 
fell-side in our north country. 

9. There can be no State without a power to guide 
and govern it. It has indeed become the fashion to 
repeat, as the latest discovery in politics, that what 
a State needs is not government but administration. 
This saying comes of a theory, to be examined pre- 
sently, that sovereign power abides permanently 
with the people at large, and that the sole function 
of princes, cabinets, and parliaments, is to provide 
means of giving effect to the popular will. This 
however is not quite a repudiation of government, 
but a peculiar view as to the seat and centre of 
government. Those who hold it, vigorously main- 
tain the right of the Many to govern, control, and 
command the Few. The need of some governing 
authority in a State can be denied by none but an 
Anarchist, a gentleman who lives two doors beyond 
Rousseau on the side of unreason. 

10. Every State is autonomous, self-governing, inde- 
pendent. Either the whole people taken collectively 
must rule the same whole taken distributively, or a 
part must rule the rest. The ruler is either the whole 
commonwealth, or more frequently a part of the 
commonwealth. An autocrat is part of the State 
which he governs. Sovereignty whole and entire is 
intrinsic to the State. A community that is to any 
extent governed from without, like British India or 
London, is not a State, but part of a State, for it is 
not a perfect community, 

11. We have it therefore that man is a social 



316 



OF THE STATE. 



animal. Naturally he is a member of a family. 
Nature requires that families should coalesce into 
higher communities, which again naturally converge 
and culminate in the State. Nature further requires 
that in every State there should be an authority to 
govern. But authority to govern and duty to obey 
are correlatives. Nature therefore requires sub- 
mission to the governing authority in the State. In 
other words, Nature abhors anarchy as being the 
destruction of civil society, and as cutting the ground 
from under the feet of civilised man. The genuine 
state of nature, that state and condition, which 
nature allows and approves as proper for the evolu- 
tion of the human faculties, is the state of man in 
civil society. That is lost where there is no judge 
in the land. 

12. There are men full of a sentimental deference 
to authority and professions of obedience, who yet 
will not obey any of the authorities that actually are 
over them. These are disobedient men. He is an 
anarchist in practice, who meditates treason and re- 
bellion against the " powers that be " actually over 
him in the State wherein he lives. To obey no actual 
power is to obey no power, as to wear no actual 
clothes is to go naked. To keep up the comparison, 
— as a man may change his clothes upon occasion, 
and thus go through a brief interval of unclothedness 
without injury to health or violation of decency, not- 
withstanding the requirement of nature to wear 
clothes : so it may be or it may not be consonant 
with the exigency of our nature at times to subvert 
by insurrection the existing government in order tc 



DIVINE ORIGIN OF POWER. 317 

the substitution of a new authority ; that does not 
concern us here. We are stating the general rule 
under ordinary circumstances. The submission to 
civil authority, which nature requires of us, must be 
paid in the coin of obedience to the actual estab- 
lished "powers that be." 

13. Any one who understands how morality comes 
from God {Ethics, c. vi., s. ii. nn. 6 — 9, 13, pp. iig — 
X25), can have no difficulty in seeing how civil powder 
is of God also. The one point covers the other. We 
need no mention of God to show that disobedience, 
lying, and the seven deadly sins, are bad things for 
human nature, things to be avoided even if they were 
not forbidden. All the things that God forbids are 
against the good of man. Their being evil is dis- 
tinguishable from their being prohibited, and antece- 
dent to it. Now as drunkenness and unchastity are 
evil for man, so too is anarchy. The one remedy for 
anarchy is civil government. Even if there were no 
God, it would be still imperatively necessary, as we 
have seen, for mankind to erect political institutions, 
and to abide by the laws and ordinances of constitu- 
tional power. But there would be no formal obligation 
of submission to these laws and ordinances ; and re- 
sistance to this power would be no more than philoso- 
phic sin. {Ethics, c. vi., s. ii., n. 6, p. iig.) What makes 
anarchy truly sinful and wrong is the prohibition of it 
contained in the Eternal Law, that law whereby God 
commands every creature, and particularly every man, 
to act in accordance with his own proper being and 
nature taken as a whole, and to avoid what is repug- 
nant to the same. {Ethics, c. vi., s. ii., n. 9, p. 120.) 



3i8 



OF THE STATE. 



Therefore, as man is naturally social, and anarchy is 
the dissolution of society, God forbids anarchy, and 
enjoins obedience to the civil power, under pain of 
sin and damnation. " They that resist, purchase to 
themselves damnation " (Rom. xiii. 2) : v/here the 
theological student, having the Greek text before 
him, will observe that the same phrase is used as in 
I Cor. xi. 29 of the unworthy communicant, as 
though it were the like sin to rend our Lord's 
mystical Body by civil discord as to profane His 
natural Body by sacrilege. But to enjoin obedience 
and to bestow authority are the obverse and reverse 
of one and the same act. God therefore gives the 
civil ruler power and authority to command. This 
is the meaning of St. Paul's teaching that there is 
no power but from God, and that the powers that 
be are ordained of God. (Rom. xiii. I.) , 

14. The argument is summed up in these seven 
consequent propositions : 

(a) Civil society is necessary to human nature. 

(b) Civil power is necessary to civil society. 

(c) Civil power is naught without civil obedience. 

(d) Civil obedience is necessary to human nature. 

(e) God commands whatever is necessary to 
human nature. 

(f) God commands obedience to the civil power. 

(g) God commissions the civil power to rule. 

15. If any one asks how the State and the civil 
power is of God any otherwise than the railway 
company with its power, or even the fever with its 
virulence, a moment's reflection will reveal the 
answer in the facts, that railway communication, 



VARIETY OF POLITIES. 



319 



however convenient, is not an essential feature of 
human life, as the State is : while diseases are not 
requirements in order to good, but incidental defects 
and evils of nature, permitted by God. Wh}^ God 
leaves man to cope with such evils, is not the ques- 
tion here. 

Readings. — Ar., PoL, L, ii. ; III., i. ; III., ix.; 
nn. 5—15. 

Section IV. — 0/ the Variety of Polities. 

1, One polity alone is against the natural law ; thai 
is every polity which proves itself unworkable and in- 
efficient : for the resty various States exhibit various 
polities workable and lawful, partly front the circum- 
stances, partly front the choice, of tJie citizens : but the 
Slim total of civil power is a constant quantity, the same 
for all States. We proceed to establish the clauses 
of this statement in succession. 

2. If a watch be necessary to a railway guard, and 
he is bound to have one accordingly, it is also neces- 
sary, and he is bound to procure it, that the watch 
shall go and keep time. A watch that will not keep 
time is an unlawful article for him to depend upon, 
being tantamount to no watch, whereas he is bound 
to have a watch. Otherwise, be his watch large or 
small, gold, silver, or pinchbeck, all this is indif- 
ferent, so long as it be a reliable timekeeper. In 
like manner, we must have a State, we must have a 
government, and we must have a government that 
can govern. Monarchy, aristocracy, parliaments, 
wide or narrow franchise, centralisation, decentra- 
lisation, any one of these and countless other forms 



320 



OF THE STATE. 



— apart from the means whereby it is set up — is a 
lawful government, where it is a workable one ; un- 
lawful, and forbidden by God and nature, where it 
cannot work. A form of government that from its 
own intrinsic defects could nowhere work, would be 
everywhere and always unlawful. 

3. You cannot argue from the accomplished fact 
the lawfulness of the means whereby it was accom- 
plished. Nor do we say that every form of govern- 
ment, which succeeds in governing, was original!}" 
set up in justice ; nor again that the success of its 
rule is necessarily due to the use of just means. The 
Committee of Pubhc Safety in Paris in 1794 did 
manage to govern, but it was erected in blood, and 
it governed by an unscrupulous disregard of every- 
body's rights. All that we say is, that no distribution 
of civil power as a distribution, or no polity as a polity 
(s. iii., n. 5, p. 312), is unlawful, if by it the govern- 
ment can be carried on. And the reason is plain. 
For all that nature requires is that there should be 
an efficient civil authority, not that this man should 
have it, or that one man or other should have it all, 
or that a certain class in council assembled should 
engross it, or that all the inhabitants of the country 
should participate in it. Any one of these arrange- 
ments that will work, satisfies the exigency of nature 
for civil rule, and is therefore in itself a lawful polity. 

4. Working, and therefore, as explained, lawful 
polities are as multitudinous as the species of animals. 
Besides those that actually are, there is a variety 
without end, as of animals, so of polities, that might 
be and are not. We can classify only the main 



VARIETY OF POLITIES, 



321 



types. We ground our classification upon Ar., Po/., 
III., vii., modernising it so as to take in forms of 
representative government, whereof Aristotle had 
no conception. 

(1) Monarchy^ or the rule of the Single Person, 
in whose hands the whole power of the State is con- 
centrated, e.g.^ Constantine the Great. 

(2) Aristocracy, or the rule of the Few, which will 
be either direct or representative^ according as either 
they themselves by their own votes at first hand, or 
representatives whom they elect, make the laws. 

(3) Democracy J or the rule of the Many, that is, 
of the whole community. Democracy, again, is either 
direct (commonly called pure) or representative. The 
most famous approach in history to pure democracy 
is the government of Athens, B.C. 438 — 338. 

(4) Limited Monarchy. 

(a) Monarchy with Aristocracy j the government of 
England from 1688 to 1830. 

(b) Monarchy with Democracy. 

5. All civil government is for the governed, that 
is, for the community at large. The perversion of a 
polity is the losing sight of this principle, and the 
conducting of the polity in the interest of the govern- 
ing body alone. By such perversion monarchy 
passes into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and 
democracy into ochlocracy or mob-rtile. It might 
appear strange that, where the power rests with the 
whole people collectively, government should ever 
be carried on otherwise than in the interest of the 
entire community, did we not remember that the 
majority, with whom the power rests in a democracy, 

V 



322 



OF THE STATE. 



may employ it to trample on and crush the minority. 
Thus the Many may v/orry and harass the Few, 
the mean and poor the wealthy and noble : though 
commonly perhaps the worrying has been the other 
way about. Anyhow it is important to observe that 
there is no polity which of itself, and apart from the 
spirit in which it is worked, is an adequate safeguard 
and rock of defence against oppression. 

6. The wide range of polities that history pre- 
sents is not drawn out by the caprice of nations. 
The very fact of a certain nation choosing a certain 
polity, where they are free to choose, is an indication 
of the bent of the national character, and character 
is not a caprice. No North American population 
are ever likely to elect an absolute monarch to 
govern them. That polity which thrives on the 
shores of the Caspian, can strike no root on the 
banks of the Potomac. The choice of a polity is 
limited by the character of the electors and by the 
circumstances in which the election is made. Not 
every generation in a nation is free to choose its 
polity : but the choice and institution of the fathers 
binds the children. Up to a certain point ancestral 
settlements must be respected, or instability ensues, 
and anarchy is not far off. Thus the spirit of freedom 
should always act as Burke says, ''as if in the pre- 
sence of canonized forefathers." 

7. The smallest State in the world is the little 
republic of Andorra in the Pyrenees. Though it be 
a paradox to say it, there is as much political power 
in Andorra as in Russia, — one and the same measure 
Df it in every State. In every State there is power 



VARIETY OF POLITIES. 



3«3 



for civil good to the full height of the emergencies 
that may arise. The same emergencies may arise 
eveiywhere, and everywhere there is full power to 
see that the commonwealth take no harm by them. 
What a great empire can do for this purpose, e,g,, 
proclaim martial law, search houses, lay an embargo 
on the means of transport, impress soldiers, the 
same can the tiniest commonwealth do in the like 
need. And the ordinary functions of government 
are the same in both. 

8. This seems at variance with the theory of 
some constitutions, according to which, there are 
certain so-called fundamental laws, which the legis- 
lature cannot call in question, nor deal with in any 
way, but must take them in all its deliberations for 
positions established and uncontrovertible. The 
British Constitution recognizes no fundamental 
laws. There is no reform that may not legally be 
broached in Parliament and enacted there. Parlia- 
ment is said to be omnipotent," " able to do every- 
thing, except to make a man a woman." But in 
many legislatures it is not so. At Athens of old 
there were certain measures which no one could 
introduce for discussion in the Sovereign Assembly 
without rendering himself liable to a prosecution, 
ypa(j)rj Trapavofjbcop. And there have been many 
monarchs termed absolute, who yet were bound 
by their coronation-oath, or by some other agree- 
ment with their people, to preserve inviolate certain 
institutions and to maintain certain laws. It may 
be contended that such a government as we have in 
England, which is theoretically competent to pass 



3^4 



OF THE STATE. 



any law within the Hmits of the natural la\v, has a 
greater range of power than a government whose 
operation is limited by a barrier of fundamental 
positive law. But this contention vanishes when 
we observe that there must remain in the State, 
which has fundamental laws, a povv^er somewhere 
to reverse them. They can be reversed at least by 
the consent of the whole people. Thus at Athens 
the ypacprj Trapavo/juayv could be suspended by a vote 
of the Assembly. A people can release their monarch 
from his coronation-oath in such portions of it as 
are not binding absolutely by divine law. Where 
fiindainental law obtains, a portion of the civil power 
becomes latent^ and only a diminished remainder is 
left free in the hands of the person or persons who 
are there said to rule. Such person or persons 
are not the adequate ruler of the State, as they have 
not the full power, but the people, with whom 
rests the latent authority to cancel certain laws, are 
to that extent partakers in the sovereignty. Where 
there is agreement of the whole people, great and 
small, no part of the power remains latent, but 
all is set free» YJiVa us, it may be observed, the 
omnipotence of parliament has become a mere 
law3^er's theory. On every great issue, other than 
that on which the sitting parliament has been 
elected, it is the practice of ministers to ''go to 
the country" by a new General Election. Thus 
only a certain measure of available authority is free 
at the disposal of parliament : the rest remaining 
latent in the general body of the electorate. Such is 
our constitution in practice. 



VARIETY OF POLITIES. 



325 



9. If in any State the whole power were free in 
the hands of one man, there we might look to see 
made good the dictum of the judicious Hooker 
{Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. i., s. x., n. 5) : To live by 
one man's will became the cause of all men's 
misery." In a monarchy untrammelled by senate 
or popular assembly, it were well that some of the 
sovereign power should remain latent, and that His 
Majesty should rule in accordance with certain laws, 
not within his royal pleasure to revoke. 

10. The State and the power of the State, apart 
from the polity, is of God. (s. iii., n. 14, p. 318.) The 
State under this or that polity and this or that ruler, 
is also of God. But, apart from the polity, the State 
is of God antecedently to any determination of any 
human will : because, willy nilly, man must live in civil 
society and God commands him so to do. But the 
State under this polity and this ruler is of God 
consequently to some determination of human volition. 
In this consequent sense we write Victoria Dei gratia, 

11. There is little use in the enquiry. Which is 
the best polity ? There is no polity which excels 
all other polities as man does the rest of animals. 
We judge of polities as of the various types of 
locomotives, according \o the nature of the count.-.y 
where they are to run. Aristotle tells us that if we 
meet with a Pericles, we shall do best to make him 
our king, and hand over all our affairs to him. (Ar., 
Pol., III., xiii., 25 : cf. Thucydides, ii., 65.) Other- 
wise, for most cities and for most men, apart from 
exceptional circumstances, or a condition of ideal 
perfection, but having regard to what is ordinarily 



326 



OF THE STATE. 



possible," he recommends a moderate republic undei 
middle-class rule. (Ar., Pol., VI., xi., Ed. Congreve.) 
This he calls par excellence a polity," TroXirela. 
Democracy, hrj^oKparLa, with Aristotle, always means 
that perversion of democracy, which we call mob- 
nile. (Ar., Pol., III., vii., nn. 3, 5.) 

12. In the English monarchy the whole majesty 
of the State shines forth in the Single Person who 
wears the Crown. The Crown is the centre of 
loyalty and gives dignity to the government. The 
Crown is above all parties in the State, knows their 
secrets, their purposes when in office as well as 
their acts, and is able to me/diate, when party 
feeling threatens to bring government to a stand- 
still. The British Crown has more weight of in- 
fluence than of prerogative.^ 

Readings, — St. Thos., la 2se, q. 105, art. i, in 
corp., ad 2, 5; Ar., Pol., III., xv. ; ib., III., xvi., 
nn. 5—8; ib., VIII. (al. V.), xi. nn. 1—3. 

Section V. — Of the Divine Right of Kings and the 
Inalienable Sovereignty of the People. 

I. " Those old fanatics of arbitrary power dogma- 
tized as if hereditary m.onarchy were the only lawful 
government m the world, just as our new fanatics 
of popular arbitrary power maintain that a popular 
election is the only lawful source of authority." 
(Burke, Reflections on French Revc lution.) 

We here stand between two idols of the tribe of 
politicians. We may call them Gog and Magog: 

• Written in the month and year of Jubilee, June, 1887. 



DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS. 



327 



Gog, the divine right of kings; Magog, the inalien- 
able sovereignty of the people. 

2. The position known in history as " the divine 
right of kings " may be best described as a political 
popedom. It is the belief of Catholics that our 
Divine Redeemer, instituting His Church by His 
own personal act as a perfect society and spiritual 
commonwealth, instituted in like manner the polity 
under which He willed it to be governed, namely, 
the Papal monarchy, begun in St. Peter and carried 
to completion according to our Lord's design under 
the line of Popes, Peter's successors. The monarchy 
thus established is^ssential to the Catholic Church. 
We speak not here of the temporal power which 
the Pope once enjoyed in the Roman States, but 
of his spiritual sovereignty over all Christendom 
The Pope cannot validly resign and put out of his 
own and his successors' hands, nor can the Cardinals 
take away from him, nor the Episcopate, one jot 
or tittle of this spiritual prerogative. He cannot, for 
instance, condition his infallibility on the consent of 
a General Council, or surrender the canonization of 
saints to the votes of the faithful at large. Such 
are the inalienable, Christ-given prerogatives ai the 
Papacy. Plenry VHI. feloniously set himself up for 
Pope within the realm of England. Blending together 
temporal and spiritual jurisdiction, he made out his 
rights and prerogatives as a monarch, even in the 
civil order, to be inalienable as in the spiritual. 
Spiritual and civil attributes together formed a 
jewelled circlet, one and indivisible, immoveably 
fixed on the brow of the King's Most Sacred 



32S 



OF THE STATE. 



Majesty. Grown and swollen by their union with 
the spirituality, the civil attributes of the Crown 
were exaggerated to the utmost, and likewise 
declared inalienable. They were exaggerated till 
they came to embrace all the powers of government. 
The privileges of Parliament, and the limitations 
to the voy^l authority, set forth in the Petition of 
Right in 1628, were regarded as mere concessions 
tenable at the King's pleasure : from which pomt 
of view we understand the readiness of so con- 
scientious a monarch as Charles I. to act against 
such privileges after he had allowed them. But to 
vest all the powers of governme^ inalienably in the 
King, so that whoever else may seem to partake in 
them, shall partake only by royal sufferance, is tan- 
tamount to declaring monarchy the sole valid and 
lawful polity. This declaration the ministers, lay and 
clerical, of our Charleses and Jameses do not seem 
to have made in express terms. It is, however, con- 
tained by implication in their celebrated phrase of 
"the inalienable prerogatives of the Crown," as in- 
terpreted by the stretches of prerogative which they 
advised. They virtually asserted of one particular 
polity, or distribution of civil power (c. viii., s. iii., n. 5, 
p. 312), that which is true only of civil power taken 
nakedly, apart from the mode of its distribution — 
they said of monarchy what is true of gover^wient — that 
the sum of its power is a constant quantity (c. viii., 
s. iv., n. 7, p. 322), and that it is of God antecedently 
to and irrespectively of any determination of popular 
will. (c. viii., s. iv., n. 10, p. 325.) 

3. Such a i)osition is easily refuted, negatively, by 



SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE. 



its being wholly unproven, unless the English Refor- 
mation, and the servile spirit in Church and State 
that promoted and was promoted by the Refor- 
mation, can pass for a proof; and again the position 
is positively refuted, when we come to consider how 
all that nature requires and God commands, is 
government under some polity, not government 
ever3^where under monarchy ; there being many 
workable polities besides monarchy, (s. iv., nn. i — 4, 
P- 319-) 

4. The same argument that demolishes Gog, 
also overturns Magog. The two idols, opposed to 
one another, stand upon the same pedestal, the 
identification of government in general with one 
particular polit}^, as though a polity were the polity. 
The great assertor and worshipper of the inalienable 
sovereignty of the people is Jean Jacques Rousseau. 
He starts from postulates which we have already 
rejected-— that all men are equal (c. viii., s. i., n. 9, 
p. 305) — that man is born free {ib., n. 10) — that none 
can be bound to obey another without his own con- 
sent (ib.f n. 11) — that civil society is formed by an 
arbitrary convention (ib., n. 4) — which convention 
is the Social Contract, {ib., n. 5.) From these un- 
reasonable postulates Rousseau draws the con- 
clusion, logically enough, that the sovereign will 
in every State is the will of the majority of the 
citizens: but the will of the majority, he goes on, 
cannot be alienated from the majority : therefore 
neither can the sovereignty be alienated, but must 
abide permanently with the people ruling by a 
majority of votes. The argumentation is excellent, 



3-30 OF THE STATE. 

but the premisses are all false. The conclusion is 
vastly popular, few minds considering from what 
premisses it is drawn. 

5. If sovereignty rests inalienably with the 
people, the one valid polity is pure democracy. 
This proposition, however, Rousseau was not 
forward to formulate. The Stuarts had shrunk 
from formulating a similar proposition about 
monarchy, though they virtually held and acted upon 
it. They were willing enough to allow of a parlia- 
ment, whose privileges and functions should be at 
His Majesty's gracious pleasure. Thus Rousseau 
will allow you to have your senate, king, emperor, 
if you will : only remember that he is the prince, not 
the sovereign. {Contrat Social, 1. iii., c. i.) The people 
collectively are the sovereign, always sovereign. 
The prince, that is, he or they to whom the adminis- 
tration is entrusted— since all the citizens cannot 
administer jointly — -is the mere official and bailiff 
of the Sovereign People, bound to carry out their 
mandate in all things, and removable at their 
pleasure. The people must meet periodically, not 
at the discretion of the prince. '* These meetings 
must open with two questions, never to be omitted, 
and to be voted on separately. The first is : 
Whether it pleases the Sovereign (People) to con- 
tinue the present form of government. The second 
is : Whether it pleases the People to leave the 
administration to the persons at present actually 
charged with it." {Contrat Social, 1. iv., c. xviii.) 

6. The claim of a pure democracy like this to 
supersede all other polities cannot be established 



SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE. 



33» 



by abstract arguments. That we have seen in 
examining the Social Contract. The alternative 
way of establishing such an exclusive claim would 
be to prove that the practical efficiency of pure 
democracy immeasurably transcends the efficiency 
of every other possible polity. There is indeed 
yet a third mode of proof resorted to. It is said 
that pure democracy everywhere is coming and 
must come ; and that what is thus on the line of 
human progress must be right and best for the time 
that it obtains. A grand invention this of Positivist 
genius, the theory, that whatever is is right ; and 
the practice, always to swim with the stream ! 
But supposing that pure democracy is coming, how 
long is it likely to last ? The answer may be 
gathered from a review of the working difficulties 
of such a polity. 

7. It is made only for a small State. Railway 
and telegraph have indeed diminished the diffi- 
culty; and have removed the need of all the 
voters meeting in one place, as was done at Athens. 
Newspapers echo and spread with addition the 
eloquence of popular orators, beyond the ears that 
actually listen to them. Still, think what it would * 
be to have a general election upon every bill that 
passes through Parliament : for that is what pure 
democracy comes to. The plan would scarcely 
work with a total electorate of thirty thousand. 
Yon say the people v/ouid entrust a committee with 
the passing of ordinary measures, reserving to them- 
selves the supervision. I am not arguing the 
physical impossibility, but the moral difficulties of 



332 



OF THE STATE. 



such an arrangement For either the people throw 
the reins of government on the neck of this com- 
mittee, or they keep a tight hold upon the committee 
and guide it. In the former case the popular 
sovereignty becomes like that of a monarch who 
leans much on favourites, a sovereignty largely 
participated in by others than the nominal holder 
of the control. On the other hand, if the people do 
frequently interfere, and take a lively interest in 
the doings of the subordinate assembly, the people 
themselves must be a small body. An active 
governing body of three hundred thousand members 
would be as great a wonder as an active man 
weighing three hundred pounds. Only in a small 
State is that intense political life possible, which 
a pure democracy must live. There only, as 
Rousseau requires, can the public service be the 
principal affair of the citizens. " All things con- 
sidered," he says, " I do not see how it is any 
longer possible for the Sovereign (People) to pre- 
serve amongst us the exercise of his rights, if the 
city is not very small." (Contrat Social, 1. iii., c. xv.) 
And the difficulty of size in a democracy is aggra- 
vated, if, as Sociahsts propose, the democratic State 
is to be sole capitalist within its own limits. The 
perfect sovereignty of the people means the dis- 
ruption of empires, and the pushing to extremity 
of what is variously described as local government^ 
home rule, autonomy, and decentralisation, till every 
commune becomes an independent State. But for 
defence in war and for commerce in peace, these 
little States must federate ; and federation means 



SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE. 



333 



centralisation, external control over the majority at 
home, restricted foreign relations, in fact the cor- 
ruption of pure democracy. 

8. Again, the perfect sovereignty of the people 
cannot subsist except upon the supposition that one 
man is as much a born ruler as another, which 
means a levelling down of the best talent of the 
community, for that is the only way in which 
capacities can be equalised—a very wasteful and 
ruinous expedient, and one that the born leaders 
of the people will not long endure. Then there is 
the proverbial fickleness of democracy, one day all 
aglow, and cooled down the next, never pursuing 
any course steadily, in foreign policy least of all, 
though there the dearest interests of the State are 
often at stake. As one who lived under such a 
government once put it : " Sheer democracy is of 
all institutions the most ill-balanced and ill put 
together, like a wave at sea restlessly tossing before 
the fitful gusts of wind : politicians come and go, 
and not one of them cares for- the public interest, 
or gives it a thought." (Quoted by Demosthenes, 
Speech on the Embassy, p. 383 A.) What they do 
care for and think of sedulously, is pleasing the 
people and clinging to office. In that respect they 
are the counterparts of the favourites who cluster 
round the throne of a despotic monarch, and suck 
up his power by flattering him. Peoples have their 
favourites as well as kings. To these persons, the 
Cleon or Gracchus of the hour, they blindly commit 
the management of their concerns, as the rot faineant 
of old Prankish times left everything to his Mayor of 



334 



OF THE STATE. 



the Palace, till the Ma3^or came to reign in his 
master's stead ; and so has the popular favourite 
ere now developed into the military despot. Strong- 
minded kings of course are not ruled by favourites, 
nor are highly intelligent and capable peoples : but 
it is as hard to find a people fit to wield the power 
of pure democracy as to find an individual fit for 
an absolute monarch, especially where the State is 
large. 

9. From all this we conclude that the new- 
fashioned Magog of pure democracy, or the perfect 
sovereignty of the people, is not to be worshipped 
to the overthrow and repudiation of all other 
polities, any more than the old-fashioned Gog of 
pure monarchy, idolised by Stuart courtiers under 
the name of *'the divine right of kings." Neither 
of these is the polity : each is a polity, but not one 
to be commonly recommended. The study of 
polities admirably illustrates the Aristotelian doc- 
trine of the Golden Mean {Ethics, c. v., s. iv., p. 77), 
teaching us ordinarily to affect Hmited monarchy or 
limited democracy. But as the mean must ever be 
chosen in relation to ourselves, a Constantine or an 
Athenian Demos may represent the proper polity in 
place under extraordinary circumstances. 

Reading. — The Month for July, 18S6, pp. 338, seqq 

Section VI. — Of the Elementary and Original Polity. 

I. ** All things are double, one against another.*' 
(Ecclus. xlii. 25.) The son of Sirach may have had 
in view the human body as divisible by a vertical 
median line into two symmetrical halves. But in 



ELEMENTARY AND ORIGINAL POLITY. 335 



each of the halves thus made, the same organ or 
hmb is never repeated twice in exact Hkeness, nor 
do any two parts render exactly the same service. 
This variety of organs in the bodies of the higher 
animals is called differentiation. As we descend in 
the animal series we find less and less of differentia- 
tion, till we reach the lowest types, which are little 
more than a mere bag, whence their name of 
Ascidians. In that State which has London for 
its capital city, we behold one of the highest types 
of political existence. Sovereignty is there divided, 
as usual in modern States, into three branches, 
Legislative, Judicial, and Executive. Each of these 
branches is shared among many persons in various 
modes and degrees, so that in practice it is not easy 
to enumerate and specify the holders of sovereignty, 
nor to characterize so complex a polity. At the other 
end of the scale we may represent to ourselves 250 
" squatters " forming an independent State in the 
far West of America. They are a pure democracy, 
and the sovereignty belongs to them all jointly. Is 
a man to be tried for his life ? The remaining 
249 are his judges. Is a tax to be levied on ardent 
spirits ? The 250 vote it. Is there a call to arms ? 
The 250 marshal themselves to war. That clearly 
is the condition of minimum differentiation, where 
one citizen is in all political points the exact counter- 
part of all the rest. Of all polities it is the most 
simple and elementary possible. And so far forth as the 
natural order of evolution in polities, as in all other 
things, is from simple to compound, this is also the 
original polity. It is also the residuary polity, that, 



33^ OP THE STATE. 

namely, which comes to be, when all other govern- 
ment in the State vanishes. Thus, if the Powder 
Plot had succeeded, and King James I., with the 
royal family. Lords and Commons, with the judges 
and chief officers of the Executive, had all -perished 
together, the sovereign authority in England would 
have devolved upon the nation as a whole. 

2. Certain monarchical writers shrink from the 
recognition of pure democracy as either the first or 
the last term of the series of polities. They do not 
recognize it as a polity at all. When there is no 
governing body distinct from the mass of people at 
large, a government must be formed, they say, by 
popular suffrage. Meanwhile, according to them, 
the sovereign power rests not with the body of 
electors : either it is not yet created, "or it has 
lapsed ; but as soon as the election is made, they 
see sovereignty breaking forth like the sun rising, in 
the person, single or composite, who is the object of 
the people's choice. This would be the correct view 
of the matter, if no choice were left to the electors, 
but they were obliged to acquiesce in some pre- 
arranged polity, as a Monarch}^, or a Council of 
Ten, and could do nothing more than designate the 
Monarch or the Council. Under such a restriction 
the Cardinals elect the Pope. But our electors can 
institute any polity they see fit. They are a Con- 
stituent Assembly. They may fix upon a monarchy 
or a republic, two or one legislative chambers, a 
wide or a narrow franchise, home rule or centraliza- 
tion : or they may erect a Provisional Governn^ient 
for five years with another appeal to the people *4 



ELEMENTARY AND -ORIGINAL POLITY. 337 



the end of that term. More than that. They could 
impose a protective duty upon corn, or endow the 
Roman CathoHc religion, making such protection or 
endowment a fundamental law (s. iv,, n. 8, p. 323), and 
withholding from the government, which they pro- 
ceed to set up, the power of meddling with that 
law. They are then not only a Constituent but 
Hkewise a Legislative Assembly. But this power of 
making laws and moulding the future constitu- 
tion of the State, what else is it but sovereign 
power, and indeed the very highest manifestation 
of sovereignty? 

3. So far we follow Suarez in his controversy 
with James I. The natural order of evolution cer- 
tainly is, that the State should be conceived in pure 
democracy, and thence develop into other polities. 
But in speaking as though the natural order had 
always been the actual order, Suarez seems to have 
been betrayed by the ardour of controversy into the 
use of incorrect expressions. It is true in the 
abstract, as he says, that " no natural reason can be 
alleged why sovereignty should be fixed upon one 
person, or one set of persons, rather than upon 
another, short of the whole community." This 
is true, inasmuch as in the abstract we view men as 
men, in which specific character they are all equal. 
But in the concrete and real life, the primeval 
citizens who start a commonwealth are rarely alike 
and equal, as the founders of the American Republic 
at the separation from Great Britain pretty well 
were, but some men, or some order of men, will so 
much excel the rest in ability, position, or posses- 
W 



338 



OF THE STATE. 



sions, that the rest have really no choice but 
to acquiesce in those gifted hands holding the 
sovereignty. 

Readings, — Suarez, De Legibus, III., iii., 6; ib., 
III., iv., nn. 2, 3, 4; Defensio Fidel, III., ii., nn. 7, 
8, 9 ; Ar., Pol., III., xiv., 12 ; ib., VIII., x., nn. 7, 8 ; 
The Month for July, 1886, pp. 342 — 345. 

Section VII. — Of Resistance to Civil Power, 

*' When they say the King owes his crown to the 
choice of his people, they tell us that they mean to 
say no more than that some of the King's pre- 
decessors have been called to the throne by some 
sort of choice. Thus they hope to render their 
proposition safe by rendering it nugatory." (BurkC; 
Reflections on Fre7ich Revolution.) 

1. The great question about civil power is, not 
whence it first came in remote antiquity, but whence 
it is now derived and flows continually as from its 
source, whether from the free consent of subjects so 
long as that lasts, or whether it obtains indepen- 
dently of their consent. Can subjects overthrow 
the ruler, or alter the polity itself, as often as they 
have a mind so to do ? or has the ru-ler a right to 
his position even against the will of his people ? A 
parallel question is, can a province annexed to an 
empire secede v/hen it chooses, as South Carolina 
and other Confederates once attempted secession 
from the American Union ? 

2, These questions raise two totally different 
issues, which must be first carefully distinguished 
and then severally answered. The first point at 



RESISTANCE TO CIVIL POWER. 



339 / 



issue is whether subjects may dethrone their ruler, 
a people alter their polity, or a province secede 
from an empire, at discretion. The second point is, 
whether the same may be done under pressure of dire 
injustice. One little matter of phraseology must be 
rectified before an answer is returned to this first 
point. The question whether subjects may dethrone 
their ruler at discretion, from the terms in which it 
is drawn, can lead to none but a negative answer. 
From the fact that they are subjects, and this man, 
or this body of men, their ruler, their allegiance 
cannot be wholly discretionary. That sovereign is 
a mere man of straw, there is no soul and substance 
of sovereign power in him, who may be knocked down 
and carted away for rubbish, any moment his so- 
called subjects please. Rousseau is quite clear on this 
point. The true debateable form of the question is, 
whether the people, being themselves sovereign, can 
remove at will the official persons who actually admin- 
ister the State ; whether they can change the polity, 
and whether the inhabitants of a province can secede. 
The answer now is simple : all depends upon the 
polity of the particular country where the case comes 
for discussion. And if so it be that the constitution 
makes no provision one way or another, any dispute 
that may occur must be settled by amicable arrange- 
ment among the parties concerned : if they cannot 
amicably agree, they must fight. To save this last 
eventuality, it were well that any claim which the 
people in any country may have to remove princes 
and statesmen from office, to alter the polity, or to 
divide the empire, should be made matter of the 



340 



OF THE STATE. 



clearest understanding and most express and un- 
ambiguous stipulation. Even so, such a provision 
must be generally viewed with disfavour by the 
political philosopher, seeing how it tends to the 
weakening and undermining of government ; whereas 
the same considerations that make out government 
to be at all a boon and a necessity to human nature, 
argue incapacity and instability in the governing 
pov/er to be a deplorable evil. We must add, that 
where the people keep in their hands any power to 
alter the polity, or transfer the administration to 
other hands, there they hold part at least of the 
sovereignty ; and the alteration or transference is 
effected by them, not as subjects, but as partial ruler. 

3. The second point we raised was, whether a 
dethronement, or an alteration of polity, 6r a seces- 
sion, may be brought about, not indeed at discretion 
for any cause, but under pressure of dire injustice. 
It comes to this : May the civil power be resisted 
when it does grievous wrong? Let us begin our 
reply with another question : May children strike 
their parents ? No. Not even in self-defence ? when 
the parent is going about to do the child some 
grievous bodily hurt ? That is an unpleasant ques- 
tion, but the answer is plain. We can make no 
exceptions to the rule of self-defence. Self-defence 
in extreme cases may raise the arm of a child 
against its parent : in a similar extremity it may set 
a people in conflict with their civil ruler. Still we 
regard with horror the idea of striking a parent, 
and speak of it generally as a thing never to be 
done : so should we regard and speak of rebellion. 



RESISTANCE TO CIVIL POWER. 



34« 



We should not parade it before men's eyes as a 
deed to be contemplated, admired, and readily put 
in execution. " I confess to you, Sir," writes Burke, 
" I never liked this continual talk of resistance and 
revolution, or the practice of making the extreme 
medicine of the constitution its daily bread." 

4. The conditions under which the civil authority 
may be withstood in self-defence, are fairly stated in 
the Dublin Review for April, 1865, p. 292. We must 
premise, that such a course of self-defence once 
publicly entered upon is like a rock rolled over the 
brow of a steep mountain : down it rolls and re- 
bounds from point to point, gathering momentum in 
the descent, till in the end the ruler, once defied, has 
to be dethroned, the polity subverted, the empire 
rent, or they who made the resistance must perish. 

Resistance is lawful : — (i) When a government 
has become substantially and habitually tyrannical, 
and that is when it has lost sight of the common 
good, and pursues its ov/n selfish objects to the 
manifest detriment of its subjects, especially where 
their religious interests are concerned. (2) When 
all legal and pacific means have been tried in vain 
to recall the ruler to a sense of his duty. (3) When 
there is a reasonable probability that resistance 
will be successful, and not entail greater evils than 
it seeks to remove. (4) When the judgment formed 
as to the badness of the government, and the 
prudence of resistance thereto, is not the opinion 
only of private persons or of a mere party: but is 
that of the larger and better portion of the people, so 
that it may morally be considered as the judgment 
of the community as a whole." 



343 



OF THE STATE. 



5. Side by side with this we will set the teaching 
of Leo XIII., Encyclical, Quod ApostoUci, 

" If ever it happens that civil power is wielded 
by rulers recklessly and beyond all bounds, the 
doctrine of the Catholic Church does not allow of 
insurgents rising up against them by independent 
action {proprio marte), lest the tranquillity of order 
be more and more disturbed, or society receive 
greater injury thereby : and when things are come 
to such a pass that there appears no other ray or hope 
of preservation, the same authority teaches that a 
remedy must be sought in the merits of Christian 
patience and in earnest prayers to God." 

The words we have italicized seem to point to 
conditions (4) and (3) respectively, as laid down by 
the writer in the DiMin Review, 

For an instance of a king dethroned, not proprio 
marte, but with every appearance at least of an act 
of the whole nation, see the dethronement of 
Edward II., as related by Walsingham, Historia 
Anglicana, I., pp. 186, 187, Rolls Series. 

6. We save ourselves the more virulent and 
destructive diseases of revolution, sedition, and civil 
war, by submitting to the milder type of a change of 
ministry. {Times, April 7, 18S0.) 

7. It is not monarchical governments alone that 
can ever be resisted lawfully : but what is sauce for 
the king's goose is sauce also for the people's 
gander. There is no special sanctity attaching to 
democracy. 

It might seem that, since resistance requires to 
be justified by the approval of " the larger and 



RIGHT OF THE SWORD, 



343 



better portion of the people " (n. 4, condition [4] ) 
no just resistance can ever be offered to the will of 
the democratic majority. But the said majority 
may be in divers ways coerced and cajoled, a mere 
packed majority, while the malcontents may be, if 
not '* the larger," clearly " the better *' portion of 
the community, (s. iv., n. 5, p. 321,) 

Readings. — St. Thos., De Regimine Principum, 
i., 6 ; 2a 23d, q. 42, art. 2 ; 2a 29e, q, 6g, art. 4, in 
corp. ; Locke, Of Civil Government, nn. 200, 201, 203, 
204, 208, 2og, 223, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230, 232. 

Section VIII. — Of the right of the sword, 

1. By the right of the sword is technically meant 
the right of inflicting capital punishment, according 
to the Apostle's words : *' But if thou do that which 
is evil, fear : for he beareth not the sword in vain." 
(Rom. xiii. 4.) We commonly call it the power of 
life and death, 

2. That a government may be a working govern- 
ment, as it should be (s. iv., n. 2, p. 319), it must not 
only make laws, but bear out and enforce its legislation 
by the sanction of punishment. " If talk and argu- 
mentation were sufficient to make men well-behaved, 
manifold and high should be the reward of talkers, 
. . . But in fact it appears that talking does very 
well to incite and stimulate youths of fine mind ; 
and lighting upon a noble character and one of 
healthy tastes, it may dispose such a person to take 
up the practice of virtue : but it is wholly unable to 
move the multitude to goodness ; for it is not their 
nature to obey conscience, but fear, nor to abstain 



344 OF THE STATE. 

— . . 

from evil because it is wrong, hut because of punish- 
ments. The multitude live by feeling : they pursue 
the pleasures that they like and the means thereto, 
and shun the opposite pains, but they have no idea, 
as they have had no taste, of what is right and fair 
and truly sweet. . . . The man who lives by feeling 
will not listen to the voice of reason, nor can he 
appreciate its warning. How is it possible to divert 
such a one from his course by argument ? Speaking 
generally, we say that passion yields not to argu- 
ment but to constraint. . . . The multitude obey on 
compulsion rather than on principle, and from fear 
of pains and penalties rather than from a sense ot 
right. These are grounds for believing that legis- 
lators, while exhorting to virtue and putting certain 
courses of conduct forward as right and honourable, 
in the expectation that good men will obey the call, 
as their habits lead them, should at the same time 
inflict chastisements and punishments upon the 
crossgrained and disobedient; and as for the in- 
curably vicious, put them beyond the pale alto- 
gether. The result will be, that the decent and 
conscientious citizen will listen to the voice of 
reason, while the worthless votary of pleasure is 
chastened by pain like a beast of burden. . . . Law 
has a coercive function, appealing to force, notwith- 
standing that it is a reasoned conclusion of practical 
wisdom and intelligence. The interference of persons 
is odious, when it stands out against the tide of 
passion, even where it is right and proper to inter- 
fere ; but no odium attaches to statute law enjoining 
the proper course." (Aristotle, Ethics, X., ix.) 



RIGHT OF THE SWORD. 



345 



3. Aristotle seems hard upon the masses, likening 
them to brutes who must be governed by the whip. 
He may be supposed to speak from experience of 
the men of his time. If humanity has somewhat 
improved in two and twenty centuries, yet it cannot 
be contended that the whip is grown unnecessary 
and beyond the whip the sword. But we must 
observe a certain modus '^operandi of punishment 
which Aristotle has not noted, a more human mode 
than the terror of slavish fear. Just punishment, 
felt as such, stimulates the conscience to discern 
and abhor the crime. Men would think little of 
outraging their own nature by excess, did they not 
know that the laws of God and man forbid such 
outrage. Again, they would think little even of those 
laws, were not the law borne out by the sanction of 
punishment. A law that m.ay be broken with im- 
punity is taken to be the toying of a legislator not 
in earnest. Men here are as children. A child is 
cautioned against lying. He reckons little of the 
caution : he tells a lie, and a flogging ensues. There- 
upon his mind reverts to what he was told : he sees 
that the warning was meant in earnest. He reflects 
that it must have been a wicked thing, that lie 
which his father, the object of his fond reverence, 
chastises so sternly. If the thing had been let 
pass, he would scarcely have regarded it as wicked. 
Next time he is more on his guard, not merely 
because he fears a beating, but because he under- 
stands better than before that lying is wrong. The 
awe in which grown-up people stand of a red 
judge," is not simple fear, like that which keeps the 



34« 



OF THE STATE. 



wolf from the flock guarded by shepherds and their 
dogs : but they are alarmed into reflection upon the 
evil which he is God's minister to avenge, and they 
are moved to keep the law, "not only for wrath, 
but for conscience sake." From this we see that 
for punishment to be really salutary, its justice must 
be manifest to the culprit, or to the lookers on, at 
least in their cooler moments. A punishment the 
justice of which is not discernible, may quell for the 
moment, but it does not moralise, nor abidingly 
deter. There must be an apparent proportion 
between the offence and the punishment. A Dra- 
conian code, visiting petty offences with the severity 
due to high misdemeanours, is more of an irritant 
than a repressor of crime, because it goes beyond 
men's consciences. 

4. There is in every human breast a strong sense 
of what the learned call lex talionis, and children tit 
for tat. " If a man has done to him what he has 
done to others, that is the straight course of justice ; " 
so says the canon of Rhadamanthus, quoted by 
Aristotle. {Eth., V., v., 3.) We have argued the fun- 
damental correctness of this rule. {Ethics, c, ix., s. iii., 
n. 2, p. 169.) It appears in the divine direction given 
to Noe : Whoso sheddeth man's blood, his blood 
shall be shed." (Gen. ix. 6.) It appears in that 
popular sentiment, w^hich in some parts of America 
displays itself in the lynching of murderers, who 
have unduly escaped the hands of the law ; and 
which, under a sim/ilar paralysis of law in Corsica, 
broke out in blood-feuds, whereby the nearest rela- 
tive of the deceased went about to slay the murderer. 



RIGHT OF THE SWORD. 



347 



Such taking of justice into private hands is morally 
unlawful, as we have proved.^ {Ethics , c. ix., s. iii., 
n. 4, p. 171 ; Natural L aWf c. viii., s. 11., nn. 2, 3> 

pp. 308, 309.) It is a violent outburst of a natural 
and reasonable sentiment deprived of its legitimate 
vent. Unquestionably then there is an apparent and 
commonly recognized fairness of retribution in the 
infliction of capital punishment for murder. Thus 
the first condition of appropriate punishment is 
satisfied, that it be manifestly proportioned to the crime. 

5. Capital punishment is moreover expedient, nay, 
necessary to the State. The right to inflict it is one 
of the essential prerogatives of government, one of 
those prerogatives the sum of which, as we have seen, 
is a constant quantity everywhere, (s. iv., n. 7, p. 322). 
No Government can renounce it. The abolition of 
capital punishment by law only makes the power of 
inflicting it latent in the State (s. iv., n. 8, p. 323) ; 
it does not and cannot wholly take the power away. 
You ask : Is there not hope, that if humanity goes 
on improving as it has done, capital punishment 
will become wholly unnecessary? I answer that — 
waiving the question of the prospect of improve- 
ment — in a State mainly consisting of God-fearing, 
conscientious men, the infliction of capital punish- 
ment would rarely be necessary, but ih.Q power to inflict 
it could never be dispensed with. If men ever 
become so ideally virtuous, the right of the State to 
visit gross crime with death cannot hurt them, and 
it will strengthen their virtue, as all human social 
virtue will ever need strengthening. 

6. The abiding necessity of this right of the sword 



348 



OF THE STATE. 



IS argued from the strength and frequency of the 
provocations to deeds of bloodshed and violence 
that must ever be encountered in human society. 
What these provocations are, how many and how 
strong, may be left to the reflection of the student 
who reads his newspaper, or even his novel. Not 
the least appalling thing about crime, atrocious 
crime especially, is the example that it gives and 
the imitators whom it begets. It is not merely that 
it sets the perpetrator himself on the downward 
path, so that, unless detected and punished, a man's 
first deed of blood is rarely his last : it draws others 
after him by a fatal fascination. Like the images 
which the Epicureans supposed all visible objects 
to slough off and shed into the air around them, 
such phantoms and images of guilt float about a 
great crime, enter into the mind of the spectator 
and of the hearer, and there, upon slight occasion, 
turn to actual repetitions of the original deed. The 
one preventive is to append to that deed a punish- 
ment, the image of which shall also enter into the 
mind, excite horror, and disenchant the recipient. 
This is not to be done by mere banishment of the 
criminal, nor by his perpetual incarceration. Exile 
and prison — particularly in view of the humanity of 
a modern penitentiary — do not sufficiently strike the 
imagination. One sweet hour of revenge will ofter 
appear cheap at the price of ten years' penal servi- 
tude. There is nothing goes to the heart like death. 
Death is the most striking of terrors ; it is also the 
penalty that most exactly counterpoises in the scales 
of justice the commission of a murderous crime. 



RIGHT OF THE SWORD. 



349 



All States need this dread figure of the Sword-bearer 
standing at the elbow of the Sovereign. 

7. But is not every capital sentence a trespass 
upon the dominion of God, Lord of life and death ? 
No, for that same God it is who has endowed man 
with a nature that needs to grow up in civil society, 
which civil society again needs for its maintenance 
the power to make laws, to sit in judgment on 
transgressors, and in extreme cases, as we have 
proved, having tried them and found them guilty, 
to take away even their lives, to the common terror 
and horror of the crime. God, who wills human 
nature to be, wills it to be on the terms on which 
alone it can be. To that end He has handed over 
to the civil ruler so much of His own divine power 
of judgment, as shall enable His human delegate to 
govern with assurance and effect. That means the 
right of the sword. 

8. It may be objected that to kill any man is 
to treat him as a thing, not a person, as an hetero- 
centric, not an autocentric being, which is a proceeding 
essentially unnatural and wrong, (c. ii., s. i., n. 2, p. 
203.) St. Thomas's answer here is peculiarly valuable: 

" Man by sinning v/ithdraws from the order of 
reason, and thereby falls from human dignity, so far 
as that consists in man being naturally free and 
existent for his own sake [autocentric] ; and falls in 
a manner into the state of servitude proper to beasts, 
according to that of the Psalm (xlviii. 15) : Man when 
he was in honour did not understand : he hath matched 
himself with senseless beasts and become like unto them ; 
and Proverbs xi. 29 : The fool shall serve the wise. And 



350 



OF THE STATE. 



therefore, though to kill a man, while he abides in 
his native dignity, be a thing of itself evil, yet to kill 
a man who is a sinner may be good, as to kill a 
beast. For worse is an evil man than a beast, and 
more noxious, as the Philosopher says." (2a 2as, 
q, 64, art. 2, ad 3.) 

Hence observe : — (i) That a Utilitarian who 
denies free will, as many of that school do, stands at 
some loss whence to show cause why even an inno- 
cent man may not be done to death for reasons of 
State, e.g., as a sanitary precaution. 

(2) That the State must come to a conclusion 
about inward dispositions by presumption from overt 
acts, arguing serious moral guilt before proceeding 
to capital punishment. To this extent the State is 
remotely a judge of sin. But it does not punish sin 
retrihutively as sin, nor even medicinally. It punishes 
the violation of its own laws, to deter future offenders. 
(Ethics, c. ix., s. iii., nn. 4 — 6, pp. 171 — 174.) 

Readings. — St.Thos., 2a 2£e, q. 64, art. 2, 3 ; 2a 232, 
q. 108, art. 3. 

Section IX. — Of War. 

I. War, a science by itself, has no interest for 
the philosopher except as an instance on a grand 
scale of self-defence. When the theory of self-defence 
has been mastered (c. ii. s. ii., p. 208), little further 
remains to be said about war. In a State, the self- 
defence of citizen against citizen is confined to the 
moment of immediate physical aggression. But in 
a region where the State is powerless and practically 
non-existent, self-defence assumes a far greater ampH- 
tude. (s. ii., n. 2, p. 309.) When the Highland chief 



WAR 



351 



lifted the cattle of the Lowland farmer, and the 
King of Scotland lay unconcerned and unable to 
intervene, feasting at Holyrood, or fighting on the 
English border, then, if there were a fair hope of 
recovering the booty without a disproportionate 
effusion of blood, the farmer did right to arm his 
people, march after the robber, and fight him for 
the stolen oxen, as the gallant Baron of Bradwardine 
would fain have done. (Waverley, c. xv.) Here is 
the right of self-defence in its full development, 
including the right of private war. But in a private 
individual this is an undesirable, rank, and luxu- 
riant growth ; and when the individual comes to 
live, as it should be his aim to live, in a well- 
organized State, the growth is pruned and cut 
down : he may then defend himself for the instant 
when the State cannot defend him ; but after the 
wrong is done, he must hold his hand, and quietly 
apply to the State to procure him restitution and 
redress. But there is no State of States, no King 
of Kings, upon earth ; therefore, when of two inde- 
pendent States the one has wronged, or is about to 
wrong the other, and will not desist nor make 
amends, nothing is left for it ; Nature has made no 
other provision, but they must fight. They must 
fall back upon the steel and the shotted gun, the 
ratio ultima regum, 

2. The Lowland farmer above mentioned might 
be spoken of as punishing the Highland robber, 
chastising his insolence, and the like. This is popular 
phraseology, but it is not accurate. Punishment, 
an act of vindictive justice, is from superior to in- 



352 



OF THE STATE. 



ferior. {Ethics, c. v., s. ix., n. 4, p. 104.) War, like other 
self-defence, is between equals. War is indeed an 
act of authority, of the authority of each belligerent 
State over its own subjects, but not of one belligerent 
over the other. We are not here considering the 
case of putting down a rebellion : rebels are not 
properly belligerents, and have no belligerent rights. 

3. The study of Civil and Canon Law flourished 
in the Middle Ages, while moral science, which is? 
the study of the Natural Law, was still in its in 
fancy. No wonder that the mediaeval jurists occa- 
sionally formulated maxims, which can only be 
squared with the principles of Natural Law by an 
exceeding amount of interpretation, — which are in 
fact much better dropped, quoted though they som*e- 
times be by moralists of repute. One such maxim 
is this, that a wrong-doer becomes the subject of the 
injured party by reason of the offence. Admit this, and 
you can hardly keep clear of Locke's doctrine of the 
origin of civil power, (s. ii., per totum, p. 307; cf. 
Suarez, De Caritate, d. xiii., s. iv., nn. 5, 6.) 

4. We have only to repeat about war what we 
said of self-defence, that all the killing that takes 
place in it is incidental, or indirect. The cannon that 
you see in Woolwich Arsenal, the powder and tor- 
pedoes, have for their end what St. Thomas {De 
Potentia, q. 7, art. 2, ad 10) declares to be the end 
and object of the soldier, ** to upset the foe," to put 
him hors de combat. This is accomplished in such 
rough and ready fashion, as the business admits of; 
by means attended with incidental results of ex- 
tremest horror. But no sooner has the bayonet 



WAR. 



353 



thrust or the bullet laid the soldier low, and con- 
verted him into a non-combatant, than the ambu- 
lance men are forward to see that he shall not die. 
If indeed even in the dust he continues to be aggres- 
sive, like the wounded Arabs at Tel-el- Kebir, he 
must be quieted and repressed a second time. 
Probably he will not escape with life from a second 
repression : still, speakmg with philosophic precision, 
we must say that "to quiet, not to kill him," is, or 
should be, the precise and formal object of the will 
of his slayer in war. St. Thomas indeed (2a 2SQ, 
q. 64, art. 7, in corp.) seems to allow the soldier 
fighting against the enemy to mean to kill his man. 
But by enemy in this passage we should probably 
understand rebel. The soldier spoken of is the in- 
strument of the feudal lord bringing back to duty 
his rebellious vassal. In the Middle Ages, till the 
end of the fifteenth century, the notion of inde- 
pendent nations scarcely found place. 

In war, as all cases of self-defence, the killing 
is indirect. In capital punishment, on the other 
hand, the killing is direct : it being chosen as a deter- 
rent means, that the offender be hanged by the 
neck" till he is ''dead, dead, dead." This disposes 
of the error, that capital punishment is an act of 
self-defence on the part of the State against evil- 
doers. We may observe finally that by the right 
of the sword, and by that alone, not in self-defence, 
not in war, but by the hand of public justice raised 
against a guilty subject, can human life ever be 
taken directly, 

Reading, — St. Thos., 2a 286, q. 40, art. I. 
X 



354 



OF THE STATE. 



Section X.—Of the Scope and Aim of Civil Government. 

I. I beseech the pious reader not to be shocked 

and scandalised by the conclusions of this section. 
He will find them in the end a valuable support to 
theology. The most religious mind can have no 
difficulty in allowing that cookery, as such, is a 
business of this world only: that you retam your 
cook, not to save your soul, but to. prepare palatable 
and wholesome nourishment for your body ; that 
honesty, sobriet}^ and good temper are officially 
requisite qualifications, simply inasmuch as the 
contrary vices would be the plague of your kitchen 
and the spoiHng of your dinner. In a Catholic 
house the soup on a Friday is made without meat. 
That restriction is observed, not as a point of 
culinary art, but because, whereas eternal salvation 
is the main end of life, and cookery a subordinate 
end, the latter must be so prosecuted as not to 
interfere with the former. She who uses ingredients 
forbidden by the Church, is the worse Christian, 
but she may be the better cook. Now, to compare 
a great thing with a little, the State equally with the 
kitchen is a creation of this world, — there are no 
nationalities, nor kitchen-ranges either, beyond the 
grave. Civil government is a secular concern. The 
scope and aim intrinsic to it, and attainable by its 
own proper forces, is a certain temporal good. 
Suarcz {De Legibus, III., xi., 7) sets forth that good 
to be, — " the natural happiness of the perfect human 
community, whereof the civil legislature has the 
care, and the happiness of individuals as they are 



SCOPE AND AIM OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 355 

members of such of a community, that they may 
live therein peaceably and justly, and with a suffi- 
ciency of goods for the preservation and comfort of 
their bodily life, and with so much moral rectitude 
as is necessary for this external peace and happiness 
of the commonwealth and the continued preservation 
of human nature." 

2. The intrinsic scope and aim of civil govern- 
ment is the good of the citizens as citizens. That, 
we have to show, is not any good of the world to 
come ; nor again the full measure of good requisite 
for individual well-being in this world. The good 
of the citizens as such is that vvhich they enjoy in 
common in their social and political capacity: 
namely, security, wealth, liberty, commerce, the arts 
of life, arms, glory, empire, sanitation, and the like, 
all which goods, of their own nature, reach not 
beyond this world. True, a certain measure of 
moral rectitude also is maintained in common, but 
only " so much as is necessary for the external 
peace and happiness of the commonwealth," not 
that rectitude of the whole man which is required 
in view of the world to come. {Ethics, c. x., n. 4 [3] , 
p. 182.) The intrinsic aim of the State, then, falls short 
of the next life. Neither does it cover the entire good 
of the individual even for this life. The good of 
the State, and of each citizen as a citizen, which it 
is the purpose of civil government to procure, is a 
mere grand outline, within which every man has to 
fill in for himself the little square of his own personal 
perfection and happiness. Happiness, as we have 
seen, lies essentially in inward acts. The conditions 



356 



OF THE STATE. 



of these acts, outward tranquillity and order, are 
the statesman's care : the acts themselves must be 
elicited by each individual from his own heart. 
Happiness also depends greatly on domestic life, 
the details of which, at least when they stop short 
of wife-beating, come not within the cognisance ol 
the civil power. It remains, as we have said, that 
the scope and aim of the State, within its own 
sphere and the compass of its own powers, is the 
temporal prosperity of the body politic, and the 
prosperity of its members as they are its members 
and citizens, but not absolutely as they are men. 
We cannot repeat too often the saying of St. Thomas : 
" Man is not ordained to the political commonwealth 
to the full extent of all that he is and has." (la 23e, 
q. 21, art. 4, ad 3.) 

3. From this view it appears that the end for 
which the State exists is indeed an important and 
necessary good, but it is not all in all to man, not 
his perfect and final happiness. To guide man to 
that is the office of the Christian Church in the 
present order of Providence. Cook and statesman 
must so go about the proper ends of their several 
offices, as not to stand in the way of the Church, 
compassing as she does that supreme end to which 
all other ends are subordinate. This limitation they 
are bound to observe, not as cook and statesman, 
but as men and Christians. A perfectly Christian 
State, as Christian, has a twofold duty. First, it 
has a positive duty, at the request of the Church, to 
follow up ecclesiastical laws with corresponding civil 
enactments, e.g., laws against criminous clerks and 



SCOPE AND AIM OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 357 



excommunicates. On this spiritual ground, being 
beyond its jurisdiction, the State must be careful 
not to forestall but to second the precept of spiritual 
authority. It is no business of the State, as such, 
to punish a purely religious offence. The second 
duty of a Christian State, and a more urgent duty 
even than the former, is the negative one of making 
no civil enactment to the prejudice of the Church : 
e.g., not to subject clerics to the law of conscription. 
Useful as their arms might be for the defence of the 
country, the State must forego that utility for the 
sake of a higher end. 

4. In the order of pure nature, which is the order 
of philosophy, there is of course no Church. Still 
there would be, as we have seen (c. i., s. i., n. 8, 
p. 197), erected on the same lines as the civil power, 
and working side by side with it, a religious power 
competent to prescribe and conduct divine worship. 
This power the State would be bound to abet and 
support, both positively and negatively; something in 
the same manner, but not to the same degree, as the 
Christian State is bound to abet the Church. The 
supreme direction of the natural religious power 
would conveniently be vested in the person of the 
Civil Ruler. Thus the Roman Emperor was also 
Chief Pontiff. 

5. How in the mere natural, as distinguished from 
the Christian order, the provinces of marriage and 
education should be divided between the civil and 
the religious power, is perhaps not a very profitable 
enquiry. The only use of it is a polemic use in 
arguing with men of no Christianity. Among all 



358 



OF THE STATE. 



men of any religion, marriage has ever been re- 
garded as one of those occasions of life that bring 
man into special relation with God, and therefore 
into some dependence on God's ministers. Educa- 
tion, again, has a religious element, to be super- 
intended by the religious power. Education has a 
secular element also, the general superintendence of 
which cannot be denied to the State. Though 
children are facts of the domestic order, and the 
care and formation of them belongs primarily to 
their parents, yet if the parents neglect trhtir charge, 
iJbi2..State can claim the right of inter^^^tion cih ahusu,. 



It certainly is within the province of the State to 
prevent any parent from launching upon the world 
a brood of young barbarians, ready to disturb the 
peace of civil society. The practical issue is, who 
are barbarians and what is understood by peace. The 
Emperor Decius probably considered every Christian 
child an enemy of the Pax Ronia7ia. But the mis- 
application of a maxim does not derogate from its 
truth. It also belongs to the State to see that no 
parent behaves like a Cyclops {kvkXwttlko)^, Ar., Eth,^ 
X., ix., 13) in his family, ordering his children, not 
to their good, as a father is bound to do, but to his 
own tyrannical caprice. For instruction, as distin- 
guished from education, it is the parent's duty to 
provide his child with so much of it as is necessary, 
in the state of society wherein his lot is cast, to 
enable the child to make his way in the world accord- 
ing to the condition of his father. In many walks ol 
h'fe one might as well be short of a finger as not 
know how to read and write. Where ignorance is 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 



359 



such a disadvantage, the parent is not allowed to let 
his child grow up ignorant. There, if he neglects to 
have him taught, the State may step in with com- 
pulsory schooling. Compulsory schooling for all 
indiscriminately, and that up to a hi^^h standard, is 
quite another matter. 

Readings. — Suarez, De Legibus, III., yi. ; ib., IV., 
ii., nn. 3, 4: St. Thos., la 23e, q. 93, art. 3, ad 3; ib., 
q. 96, art. 2; ib., q. 98, art. i, in corp.; -^'6., q. 99, 
art. 3, in corp. ; ib., q. 100, art. 2, in corp. 

Section XI. — Of Law and Liberty. 

1. The student of Natural Law does not share 
the vulgar prejudice against civil law and lawyers. 
He knows it for a precept of the Natural Law, that 
there should be a State set up, and that this State 
should proceed to positive legislation. This legisla 
tion partly coincides with Natural Law in urging the 
practice of that Hmited measure of morality, which 
IS necessary for the State to do its office and to be 
at all. (s. X., n. 2, p. 355.) This partial enforcement 
of the Law of Nature is the main work of the 
criminal law of the State. But State legislation goes 
beyond the Natural Law, and in the nature of things 
must go beyond it. Natural Law leaves a thousand 
conflicting rights undetermined, which in the interest 
of society, to save quarrels, must be determined 
one way or another. 

2. An illustration. It is an axiom of Natural Law, 
that res perit domino ; that is, the owner bears the 
loss. If an article under sale perishes before delivery, 
the loss falls, apart from contracts to the contrary, 



3^ 



OF THE STATE. 



upon whichever of the two parties is the owner at 
the time. So far nature rules. But who is the 
owner at any given time, and at what stage of the 
transaction does the dominion pass ? That can only 
be settled by custom and the law of the land. " If 
I order a pipe of port from a wine-merchant abroad ; 
at what period the property passes from the mer- 
chant to me ; whether upon delivery of the wine at 
the merchant's warehouse ; upon its being put on 
shipboard at Oporto ; upon the arrival of the ship in 
England at its destined port ; or not till the wine be 
committed to my servants, or deposited in my cellar; 
all are questions which admit of no decision but what 
custom points out." (Paley, Mor, Phil., bk. iii., p. i, 
c. vii.) 

This leads us to remark upon the much admired 
sentence of Tacitus, in corruptissima rcpublica plu- 
rimcB leges, that not merely the multitude of transgres- 
sions, but the very complexity of a highly developed 
civilization, requires to be kept in order by a vast 
body of positive law. 

3. Incidentally we may also remark, that the law 
of the State does not create the right of property ; 
otherwise, abolishing its own creation, the State 
could bring in Communism, (c. vii., s. i., p. 278.) 
But finding this right of property unprotected and 
undetermined, the State by its criminal law protects 
property against robbers, and by its civil as dis- 
tinguished from criminal law, it defines numerous 
open questions between possessors as to manner of 
acquirement and conditions of tenure. 

4. All civil laws bind the conscience : some by 



*. 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 



way of a categorical imperative, Do this : others by 
way of a disjunctive, Do this, or being caught acting 
otherwise, submit to the penalty. The latter are called 
purely penal laws, an expression, by the way, which 
has no reference to the days of religious persecution. 
Civil law binds the conscience categorically whenever 
the civil ruler so intends. In the absence of express 
declaration, it must be presumed that he so intends 
whenever his law is an enforcement of the Natural 
Law, or a determination of the same ; as when the 
observance is necessary to the preservation of the 
State, or when the ruler determines what lapse of 
time shall be necessary for the acquisition of property 
by prescription. Very frequently, the parties to a 
contract tacitly accept the dispositions of the civil 
law as forming part of their agreement ; and in this 
indirect fashion the civil law becomes binding on the 
conscience. In this way an Englishman who accepts 
a bill of exchange tacitly binds himself to pay interest 
at five per cent., if the bill is not met at maturity, for 
such is the disposition of the English Law. It may 
be further observed that no prudent legislator would 
attach a severe penalty to what was not already 
wrong. 

5. In Roman times it was part of the flattery of 
the imperial jurists to their master, to tell him that 
he was above the laws, legibus soluttcs. In the trial 
of Louis XVI., the Sovereign People, or they who 
called themselves such, dispensed with certain legal 
formalities on that same plea. Against the law at 
Athens, the generals who had fought at Arginusae 
were condemned by one collective sentence, the 



OF THE STATE. 



anger of the Sovereign People being too impatient 
to vote on them separately, as the law required. 
Hereupon we must observe in the first place, that 
the Supreme Ruler, whether one man or a multitude, 
Can never be brought to trial in his own court for 
any legal offence. As all justice requires two terms : 
no power can do justice on itself. {Ethics, c. v., s. ix., 
n. I, p. 102.) This truth is embodied in the English 
maxim, that the king can do no wrong. Again, the 
Sovereign is either expressly or virtually exempted 
from the compass of many laws, e.g. those which 
concern the flying of certain flags or ensigns, and 
other petty matters. Thirdly, we have the principle, 
that no being can give a law to himself. {Ethics, c. vi. 
s. ii., n. 3, p. 117.) Lastly, we must observe that there 
is no law so fundamental but what the Supreme 
Power, taken in its entirety, can alter it, and by con- 
sequence dispense from it. From these considera- 
tions it follows that the Sovereign — the complete and 
absolute Sovereign, be he one man or many — lies 
under no legal obligation to obey any law of his own 
making as such. It does not follow that he is perfectly 
free to ignore the laws. He is bound in conscience 
and before God to make his government effectual ; and 
effectual it cannot be, if the laws are despised ; and 
despised they will be, if the Sovereign gives scandal 
by ignoring them in his own practice. Therefore 
the Sovereign, be he King, Council, or Assembly, is 
bound in conscience and before God, though not 
legally of his own jurisdiction, so far himself to stand 
to the observance of the lav/ as not to render it 
nugatory in the eyes and practice of others. 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 



363 



6. Law and liberty are like the strings and 
meshes of a net. In the one limit of minimum of 
mesh, the net passes into sack-cloth, where nothing 
could get through. In the other Hmit of maximum 
of mesh, the net vanishes, and everything would get 
through. We cannot praise in the abstract either a 
large mesh or a small one : the right size is according 
to the purpose for which the net is to be used in each 
particular case. So neither can law nor liberty be 
praised, as Burke says, " on a simple view of the 
subject, as it stands stripped of every relation, in all 
the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstrac- 
tion." We can only praise either as it is clothed 
in circumstances." Commonly we are led to praise 
the one by getting too much of the other. Con- 
founded in a tangle of fussy, vexatious, perhaps 
malicious restrictions, men cry loudly for liberty. 
When people all about us are doing things by their 
own sweet will, we are converted to praise of regu- 
lation and discipline and the wholesome restraint of 
law. 

' Readings. — St. Thos., la 29e, q. g6, art. 5, ad 3 ; 
Suarez, De Legibus, III., xxxv. ; ih., V., iv. ; Ruskin, 
Seven Lamps of Architecture, c, vii., §§ i, 2. 



OF THE STATE. 



Section XII. — Of Liberty of Opinion. 

1. We are here dealing with Hberty only so far 
as it means exemption from State control. So far as 
the State is concerned, a man has the fullest liberty 
to hold in his heart the most seditious opinions, 
and to think the foulest thoughts, so long as they 
do not appear in his public language and conduct. 
The heart is free from all mere humanlaw, resting 
in subjection to His law alone, and in responsibility 
to His judgment, who is the Searcher of Hearts. 

2. We are dealing then not properly with 
opinion, but with the public expression of opinion. 
We are dealing with that expression as controllable 
by the State, not acting in deference to the invitation 
of any religious power, but of its own initiative and 
proper authority, in view of its own end, scope and 
aim, which is social order and public prosperity for 
this life. (s. x., nn. 2, 3, p. 355.) 

3. That there are doctrines dangerous to social 
order, cannot be denied, unless we are to cease to 
believe in any influence of thought upon conduct. 
It is important to the State, that men should have 
the greatest possible horror of crime, (s. viii., nn. 3, 6, 
pp. 345, 348.) This horror is notably impaired 
when all idea of sin is taken away. Now the idea 
of sin vanishes with that of God. {Ethics, c, vi., 
s. ii., nn. 6, 7, 13, pp. 119, 123.) Therefore to pull 
down the idea of God among a nation of theists, 
whether by the wiles of a courtly Professor at a 
University, or by the tub-thumping blasphemy of 
an itinerant lecturer, is to injure the State. The 



LIBERTY OF OPINION. 



tub-thumper however is the more easily reached by 
the civil authority, especially when his discourses 
raise a tumult among the people. But where attacks 
upon theism have become common, and unbelief is 
already rampant among the masses, for the State to 
interfere with either leader of thought," high or 
low, would be a shutting of the stable-door after the 
steed was stolen. Similarly we should speak ol 
those who subvert the received notions touching the 
sanctity of the marriage-tie and the law of external 
purity generally, the obligation of civil allegiance, the 
rights of property and of life. 

4. It will be objected : " The doctrines that you 
wish to express as inimical to the peace of the 
commonwealth, possibly may be true. Did not the 
first heralds of Christianity trouble the peace of the 
Roman world ? " We reply : Let the new teachers 
come to us as those apostolic men came, " in weak- 
ness and in fear and in much trembling," and yet 
withal ** in the showing of the spirit and power," 
with an exhortation not of uncleanness," nor upon 
an occasion of covetousness," " holily and justly 
and without blame " (i Cor. ii. 3, 4 ; i Thess. ii. 3, 
5, 10) ; and we will receive them as angels of God, 
even to the plucking out of our own eyes, if need be, 
and giving to them. (Gal. iv. 15.) Any hostile recep- 
tion that they may meet with at first from a mis- 
application of our principle, will soon be made up 
for by welcome and veneration. There is no principle 
that may not be momentarily misapplied in all good 
faith. But the mistake in this case will readily be 
rectified. 



366 



OF THE STATE. 



5. But, writes J. S. Mill, On Liberty, "we can 
never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring 
to stifle is a false opinion." If we cannot, then is 
there no such thing as certainty upon any point of 
morals, politics, or religion. Assassination of tyrants, 
whether in public or private life, may be wickedness, 
or it may be a laudable outburst of public spirit, who 
knows ? Which of us is sure that all property is not 
theft ? Plato's views on marriage and infanticide 
may be correct : the Nihilist may be your true 
politician ; and all our reHgious knowledge dwindles 
down to the confession of Protagoras : Concerning 
Gods, I find no clear evidence whether they are or 
are not, or what manner of beings they are." These 
are the sceptical tremors which this denial induces. 
But even scepticism has its proof, which Mill 
furnishes as follows: ''All silencing^ of discussion is 
an assumption of infallibility." The very name m- 
fallibility has an effect upon the modern Englishman 
like that of Popery upon his forefathers. It shakes 
his nerves, obscures his judgment, and scares his 
seated reason to leap up from her throne. But after 
we have recovered from our fright, we recollect that, 
whereas infallibility is an all-round attribute, com- 
passing an entire subject, certainty goes out to one 
particular point on the circumference ; we may then 
be certain without being infallible. Extremely fallible 
as I am in geography, I am nevertheless certain that 
Tunis is in Africa. Silencing discussion is an assump- 
tion, not of infallibility, but of certainty. The man 
who never dares assume that he is certain of any- 
thing, so certain as to close his ears to all further 



LIBERTY OF OPINION. 



367 



discussion, comes nothing short of a universal 
sceptic. 

6. We are told, free discussion promotes dis- 
covery. Yes, free discussion in philosophical circles, 
free discussion among competent persons. But free 
discussion of a subject amon^ the incompetent and 
the incapable, and the passionate and the prejudiced, 
is not good for the cause of truth ; and if the subject 
be practical and momentous, it is not good for the 
disputants either, nor for the community. If we 
allow that the science and practice of morality is 
not advanced b}^ free debate of ethical questions in 
nurseries and boarding-schools, we must also bear 
in mind that a vast proportion of the human family 
remain all their lives long, for the purpose of such 
discussions, as incompetent as children. The multi- 
tude cannot be philosophers. They have neither 
time, nor intelligence, nor love of hard thinking 
sufficient to arrive at the final and adequate why 
and wherefore of their every duty. Though capable 
of doing right, they are quite incapable of doing so 
philosophically. They do it according as they are 
led by custom and authority. Their inheritance is 
the traditionary wisdom of mankind, which they live 
upon as an infant on his estate, not understanding 
whence their support comes. It is dangerous to 
batter them with objections against the received 
moral law. You will overthrow them, not confirm 
them by the result of your reasonings : you will 
perplex their intellect, you will confound their good 
purpose, you will awaken their evil passions. Surely 
it is a more necessary point to secure that right be 



368 



OF THE STATE. 



done somehow, than that it be philosophically done. 
The one is difficult enough, the other quite impossible 
for the mass of mankind. Therefore, adapting to 
our purpose the old Greek oracle : "let us not disturb 
the foundations of popular morality : they are better 
undisturbed "-— 

VL)} kIvsi Kaudpiyav aKlvrjros yap ajx^lvoiv. 

7. But is it not immoral to interfere with con- 
science, and to attempt to stifle sincere convictions ? 
The State, we repeat, has nothing to do with con- 
science as such, nor with the inward convictions of 
any man. But if the State is sincerely convinced, 
that the convictions openly professed and propagated 
by some of its subjects are subversive of social order 
and public morality, whose sincere conviction is it 
that must carry the day in practice ? It is of the 
essence of government that the convictions, sincere 
or otherwise, of the governed shall on certain 
practical issues be waived in the external observance 
in favour of the convictions of the ruling power. 
After all, this talk of conscience and sincere convic- 
tions is but the canting phrase of the day, according 
to which conscience means mere wild humour and 
headstrong self-will. Such teachings as those which 
we would have the State to suppress, e.g.-. An oath 
is a folly : There is no law of purity : There is no harm 
in doing anything that does not annoy your neighbour: 
are not the teachings of men sincerely convinced : 
they deserve no respect, consideration, or tenderness 
on that score. We do not say, that the teachers of 
these monstrosities are not convinced, but that they 



LIBERTY OF OPINION. 



are not honestly and conscientiously convinced : they 
have blinded themselves, and become the guilty 
authors of their own delusion. Not all strong con- 
victions are honestly come by or virtuously enter- 
tained. 

8. Arraigned for their utterances, men protest 
their sincerity, as parties indicted for murder do 
their innocence. We can set but small store by 
such protestations. It is a question of evidence to 
come from other sources than from the accused 
person's own mouth. A man indeed must be held 
to be sincere until he is proved to be the contrary. 
That is the general rule. But there are what Roman 
lawyers call prcuswnptioiies j\ms ; circumstances which, 
if proved, will induce the court to take a certain view 
of a case, and give judgment accordingly, unless by 
further evidence that view is proved to be a false one. 
Now when a man proclaims some blatant and 
atrocious error in a matter bearing directly upon 
public morals — and it is for the restraint of these 
errors alone that we are arguing — there is a decided 
prcBsuniptio jiiris, that the error in him, however 
doggedly he maintains it, is not a sincere, candid, 
and innocently formed conviction. The light of 
nature is not so feeble as that, among civilized men. 
Let the offender be admonished and given time to 
think : but if, for all warning to the contrary, the 
wilful man will have his way, and still propagate his 
error to the confusion of society, he must be treated 
like any other virtuous and well-meaning criminal : 
he mu5t be restrained and coerced to the extent that 
the interests of society require. 

V 



570 



OF THE STATE. 



9. At the same time it must be confessed that 
when an error, however flagrant and pestilential, has 
ceased to shock and scandalize the general body 
of the commonwealth ; when the people listen to 
the doctrine without indignation, and their worst 
sentence upon it pronounces it merely queer," 
there is little hope of legal restraints there enduring 
long or effecting much. Penalties for the expression 
of opinion are available only so far as they tally with 
the common feeling of the country. When public 
opinion ceases to bear them out, it is better not to 
enforce them : for that were but to provoke resent- 
ment and make martyrs. No regulations can be 
maintained except in a congenial atmosphere. 
Allowance too must be made for the danger of 
driving the evil to burrow underground. 

10. The censorship of opinions even in a model 
State would vary in method according to men and 
times. The censorship of the Press in particular 
might be either by IniprimahLr required before print- 
ing, or by liability to prosecution after. The Im- 
primatur might be either for all books, or only for a 
certain class. It might be either obligatory, or 
merely matter of counsel, to obtain it. We are not 
to adopt promiscuously ail the praiseworthy institu- 
tions of our forefathers. 

Readings. — Cardinal Newman, Letter to Duke oj 
Norfolkf § 5 ; The Month for June, 1883, pp. 200, 
5cqq. 



APPENDIX. 



Of the precepts of Natural Law, some are more 
simple and of wider extension ; others are derivative, 
complex, and extend to fewer cases. It is a question 
of more and less, and no hard and fast line of 
demarcation can be drawn between them. The 
former however are called primary, the latter 
secondary precepts. Again, the nature of man is 
the same in all men and at all periods of history 
for its essential elements, but admits of wide acci- 
dental variation and declension for the worse. 
Thirdly, it is clear that Natural Law is a law good 
and suitable for human nature to observe. Starting 
from these three axioms, we apply the reasoning of 
St. Thomas, la 22e, q. 96, art. 2, not to human law 
alone, of which he is speaking, but to sundry 
secondary precepts of Natural Law. These are his 
words : 

" A law is laid down as a rule or measure of 
human acts. Now a measure ought to be homo- 
geneous with the thing measured. Hence laws 
also must be imposed upon men according to their 
condition. As Isidore says : * A law ought to be 
possible both according to nature and according to 
the custom of the country.* Now the power or 



572 



APPENDIX. 



faculty of action proceeds from interior habit or 
disposition. The same thing is not possible to him 
who has no habit of virtue, that is possible to a 
virtuous man ; as the same thing is not possible to 
a boy and to a grown man, and therefore the same 
rule is not laid down for children as for adults. 
Many things are allowed to children, that in adults 
are visited with legal punishment or with blame, 
and in like manner many things must be allowed 
to men not perfect in virtue, which would be 
intolerable in virtuous m.en." 

This reasoning leads us up to a conclusion, 
which St. Thomas states thus (la 2se, q. 94. art. 5) : 

" A conceivable way in which the Natural Law 
might be changed is the way of subtraction, that 
something should cease to be of the Natural Law 
that was of it before. Understanding change in this 
sense, the Natural Law is absolutely immutable in 
its first principles ; but as to secondary precepts, 
which are certain detailed conclusions closely re- 
lated to the first principles, the Natural Law is not 
so changed as that its dictate is not right in most 
cases steadily to abide by; it may however be 
changed in some particular case, and in rare 
instances, through some special causes impeding 
the observance of these secondary precepts." 

The reason for this conclusion, more pregnant, 
it may be, than St. Thomas himself discerned, is 
given briefly as follows (2a 28e, q. 57, art. 2, ad i) : 

" Human nature is changeable ; and therefore 
what is natural to man may sometimes fail tc hold 
good." 



APPENDIX. 



373 



The precepts of Natural Law that fail to be 
applicable when human nature sinks below par, 
are only secondary precepts, and few even of them. 
Christianity brings human nature up to par, and 
fulfils the Natural Law (St. Matt. v. 17), enjoining 
the observance of it in its integrity. This is the 
meaning of St. John Chrysostom's saying : " Of 
old not such an ample measure of virtue was pro- 
posed to us ; . . . but since the coming of Christ 
the way has been made much narrower." (De Vir- 
ginitate, c. 44 : cf. his 17th Homily on St. Matt. v. 37 ; 
indeed the doctrine is familiar in his pages.) Thus 
the prohibition of polygamy, being a secondary 
precept of the natural law, failed in its application 
in that age of lapsed humanity, when a woman was 
better one of many wives, protected by one husband, 
than exposed to promiscuous violence and lust. 
(Isaias iv. i.) 



NOTE ON ROUSSEAU. 

The ruler is the servant of the good of the people, 
not of the will of the people, except inasmuch as — 

a. the will of the people is an indication of 
ihexx good, of which they are probable judges; 

p. it is usually impossible to do good to the 
people against their steady will. 



INDEX 



Aggregation theory of civil 
power, 212, 307 — S. 

Altruism, 181 — 2. 

Altum dominium, 293. 

Anger, 61—4; differs from hat- 
red, 63. 

Appetite in the modern sense, 
49 ; in the scholastic sense, 
85 — 6 ; appetite and desire, 
50- I. 

Archetype Ideas, 11^, 

Aristotle, imperfect as a moral 
philosopher, pref. vi — ix ; on 
happiness, 9, 10, 291 ; on the 
passions, 43 ; on the mean of 
virtue, 79 ; on death, 94 ; his 
Magnanimous Man, 98 — 101 ; 
distinguishes chastisement 
from vengeance, 171 ; virtue 
from art, 184; on property, 
279 ; defines a State, a citizen, . 
a polity, 310, 312; on the 
State's need to punish, 343 — 4. ' 

Atheism, effects of social and 
political, 364 — 7. 

Autocentric and heterocentric, 
204—5, 248, 349. 

Bain, Alexander, on content, 

15; on punishability, 118. 
Beatific vision, 24. 

Capital Punishment, 30S, 346 
— 9; not inconsistent with 
God's dominion over life, nor | 
with the personality (auto- 
centric) of man, 349; power 
of (right of the sword), the 
distinguishing mark of sover- 
eignty, 308, 347 ; sole instance 
of rightful direct killing, 353. 
cf- 349. 350. 

Charity, 237—244; to enemies, 



240 — 3 ; obligation of, how 
differing from justice, 243—4. 
Church and State, elementary 

philosophy of, 354 — 7, 
Circumstances of act, 33 — 5 ; 
distinguished from means, 34, 
205—7. 

Civil authority, of God, 316—8, 
325 ; binds the conscience, 
360 — I ; latent or free, 324 ; 
various distributions of, 319 — 
321 ; not tied to any one po\- 
^ty. 325 — 334 ; when rightfully 
resisted, 340 — 2. 
' Comfort, no specific against 
' crime, 52—3. 
[Communism, 278—283. 
Conscience, natural law of, 133 
— 5; defined, 135 — 6; erron- 
eous conscience, 136 — 7 ; re- 
quires educating, 142 — 6; Con- 
science and the State, 368 — 9. 
I Contemplation, essence of happi- 
ness, 22 — 5. 
Contracts, 253 — 4. 

Delight, or pleasure, quality 
of, 54 -8; 180 — i; said to 
perfect activity, 56 ; not hap- 
piness, Gi, 181. 
Democracy, may be tyrannical, 
321—2 ; not the sole valid po- 
lity, sheer democracy difficult 
to work, 329 — 334 ; original 
and residual polity, 335 — 6; 
no special sanctity attaching 
to democracy, 342. 
Deontology, pref. viii. i, 2, 109 
sq. 

Desire, physical and psychical, 
49—53- 

Direct and indirect (or inci- 



376 



INDEX. 



dental) definer], 203 — 5, cf. 31 
sq. 

Divorce, 274 — 7. 
Duelling, essential wrong of, 
222 — 4. 

Dumb animals, our relations 
with, 248 — 251. 

Duty, matter not of mere good- 
ness, but of law, ii5sq.; duties 
of justice, correlative of a 
right, 246 — 7 ; duties negative 
and positive, 247, 

Education, the State's part in, 
358-9- 

End in view, 3 — 5, 31 — 9; end 
does -not justify means, 32, 
136 — 8, 207 — 8 ; itself limit- 
less, sets a limit to the means, 
15.51.78. 83. 

English monarchy, 326. 

Ethics, strict view of, pref. vi. 

vii. I, 2. 

Evil, none essential and positive 
in human nature, 170 — i. 

Fear, as an excuse, 30 — i. 
Food and fiddling, when better 
than philosophy, 58, cf. 47, 59. 
Fortitude, 94 — 7. 
Francis of Assisi, St. 100 — i. 

General consequences, prin- 
ciple of, 178—9, 214 — 5. 

God, transcends created being, 
23 — 4 ; object of human happi- 
ness, 24 — 5 ; God and possi- 
bilities, 114; cannot but en- 
force morality, 120 — 2; how 
entering into Moral Philo- 
sophy, 123 — 5, cf. pref. vii. 

viii. ; does not dispense from 
the natural law, 149, 150, 273 ; 
punishes sin, 174 — 6; twofold 
worship of, 191 — 6; God be- 
yond the sphere of utilities, 
195 — 6; duty of knowing Him, 
200 — I ; why He cannot lie, 
228 — 9; no God, no sin, 119, 
125, 364. 

Greek taste, 81 — 2. 



Grotius and Milton, on lying, 
230 — I. 

Habit, defined, 64 ; acquired by 
acts, 66 — 7 ; a living thing, 
needs exercise, 67 ; habit and 
custom, 67 — 8 ; man a creature 
of habits, 68 — 9 ; habits re- 
main in the departed soul, 
162—3. 

Happiness, defined, 6 — 12; open 
to man, 13 — 20 ; final in con- 
templation of God, 21—6 ; 
other than contentment, 15; 
desired without limit, 51 — 2; 
not pleasure, 61. 

Hatred and anger, 63 — 4. 

Hedonism, 180 — i. 

Hobbes, his Leviathan, 297 — 
307- 

Honour and reputation, 251 — 3. 

Horace, his phrase, aurea viedio- 
critus, 80. 

Human act, i, 27 sq., no; out- 
ward and inward, one, 40. 

Humility, 92 — 3. 

Hypnotism, 199. 

Ignorance, as an excuse, 27 — 9. 

Integrity, state of, 49. 

Intellectual error, sometimes 
voluntary, 28 ; in that case 
not mere intellectual error, 
75-6, 113. 

Jurisdiction, differs from do- 
minion, 12S — 9. 

Justice, always relative to an- 
other, 102 — 3 ; legal (or gene- 
ral), distributive, commutative 
(corrective), 103 — 8; justice 
and charity differ, loS. 

Kant, his Categorical Impera- 
tive, 116— 8. 

Killing, direct and indirect, 
202 — 8 ; indirect in self-de- 
fence, 208 — 211; and in war, 
352 — 3 ; direct only in capital 
punishment, 353, cf. 349, 350. 

Knowledge of God, obligatory, 
200 — I. 



INDEX. 



377 



Labour, qualitative as well as 
quantitative, 288 ; capital not 
simply an embodiment of 
labour, 286 — 7. 

Land, a raw material, nationali- 
sation of, 292 — 6. 

Law, defined, 126 — 8 ; the Eter- 
nal Law, 128—130 ; irresistible 
and yet resisted, 130—2, 174 — 
6 ; extends to all agents, 
rational and irrational, 129 — 
132; co-eternal with, yet not 
necessary as God, 129 ; laws 
of physical nature, 131 — 2 ; 
law of conscience, 133 — 5; 
fundamental laws of a state, 
323 — 4, 362 ; civil law, neces- 
sary complement of natural 
law, 359, 360 ; civil law, how 
binding in conscience, 360 — i; 
the King, legihus sohctus, how 
far, 361 — 2 ; law and liberty, 
363. 

Lay mind, 202. 

Liberty, the mashes of the net of 
law, 363 ; liberty of opinion 
and the press, 364 — 370. 

Locke, on the state of nature, 
309- 

Lying, definition of, 224 — 5 ; in- 
tention to deceive, no part of 
the definition, 225 ; intrinsi- 
cally and always wrong, 225 — 
231 ; why God cannot lie, I 
228—9 ; not against commu- 
tative justice, 230 — i; mental I 
reservation not in every case; 
a lie, 233-7- | 

Magnanimous man, 98 — loi, i 
Magnificence, 97 — 8. ' 
Marriage, duty of the race, not ' 

of the individual, 264 — 6 ; twoi 

goods of marriage, 267—270 ; 

unity, 270 — 4 ; indissolubility, ; 

274—7. 

Material and formal, 33, 225. 
Marx, Karl, 286. j 
Means to end, truly willed, 32;' 
four sorts of, 36 ; how far and ' 



how not sanctified by the end, 
32, 36 — 8 ; distinguished from 
circumstances, 34, 205 — 7 ; 
limited by the end, 15, 51, 78. 

Meekness and clemency, 93. 

Mental reservation, not in every 
case a lie, 233 — 7. 

Mill, John, confounds self-de- 
fence with vengeance, 170 — 
213; his Utilitarianism, 178 — 
188; on Liberty, 365—6 

Modesty, 93. 

Morality, meaning of, 109 sq. ; 

determinants of, 31 sq. 
Moral Philosophy, definition and 

division, pref. v. — viii., i, 2; 

a progressive science, 152 ; 

subtlety of, 202. 
Moral Sense, no peculiar faculty 

distinct from Intellect, 137 — 

141, 145. 
Money, ancient and modern use 

of, 259 — 262. 

Nature, does nothing in vain, 
15 — 8 ; living according to na- 
ture, 112, 184 ; laws of nature, 
inviolable as tendencies, 131 ; 
state of nature, 308, 31G, 316. 

Natural, in contrast with super- 
natural, 21, 24 ; natural and 
physical confounded by anci- 
ents, 53; does not mean 'com- 
ing natural', 135, 146. 

Natural law of conscience, 133 — 
5 ; mutable subjectively, 147— 
8 ; immutable, situation re- 
maining unchanged, 148 — 9 ; 
primary and secondary pre- 
cepts, some of the latter fail 
to hold even objectively, where 
human nature has sunk below 
par, 371—3, (notwithstanding 
150 — i) ; not open to dispensa- 
tion, 149, 150, 273. 

Nominalism, subversion of philo- 
sophy, 114. 

Obedience, not wholly of the 
nature of a contract, 305—6. 



378 



INDEX. 



Ought, or Obligation, analysis of 
the idea, pref. vi. 115 sq., 140. 

Passion, as an excuse, 29, 30 ; 
definition of, 41 ; species of, 

42 — 3 ; not to be extirpated, 

43 — 7 ; never morally evil by 
itself, 47 — 8 ; passion and prin- 
ciple, two different sources of 
sin, 93—4- 

People, the, all government for, 
129, 321 ; sovereignty of, 329, 
330> 339 ; not philosophers, 
367. 

Person, autocentric, as distin- 
guished from a thing (hetero- 
centric), 204—5, 349; to have 
a right, you must be a person, 
244—5, 248. 

Plato, on desires, 53 ; on the 
mean of virtue, 82 ; his simili- 
tude of the charioteer, 85 — 6 ; 
his phrase, ' set up on holy 
pedestal 93 ; fails to discover j 
justice in his Republic, 102, j 
cf, 112; his ignoring of spiri- j 
tual sins, 113 ; ignores retribu- 
tive punishment, 176 : object 
of his Republic, 188—9. 

Pleasure, or delight, quality of, 
54 — 8, 180 — I ; perfects acti- 
vity, 56 ; how far wrong to 
act or live for pleasure, 59 — 
61 ; not happiness, 61, 181. 

Polity, defined, 312; variety of 
polities, 319 — 321 ; no one 
polity best, universal and ex- 
clusive, 325 — 334 ; elementary 
and original polity, 334 — 7 ; 
the polity the standard of the 
politically allowable, 339. 

Polygamy, 271 — 2 ; patriarchal 
practice, 272 — 3. 

Powers that be, ordained of God, 
316—8, 325. 

Private war, right renounced by 
civilised man, 309, 351. 

Probable opinion, what, how a 
lawful ground of action, 
152—8. 



Property, res familiaris, 278 — 281. 

Prudence, 87 — 9. 

Punishment, naturally conse- 
quent upon sin, 130 — 2, 159, 
160, 163 ; also a divine in- 
fliction, i6r, 174 — 6; final, 
eternal, 164 — 6 ; medicinal, 
deterrent, retributive, i6g — 
176, 308, 350 ; human punish- 
ment perhaps never purely 

. retributive, 174 ; capital 
punishment, 308, 346 — 9 ; 
punishment a stimulus to con- 
science, 345 — 6 ; war not 
punishment, 351 — 3. 

Pyramid of capacities, 286. 

Reiffenstuel on duelling, 
220—2. 

Religion, how connected with 
morality, 123 — 5 ; duties of 
religion, 191 — 5 ; natural re- 
ligious power, 357 ; the State 
and religion, 356 — 7, 364. 

Restitution, when due, 107 — 8, 
244 ; not retribution, 172 — 3. 

Resurrection, 21. 

Revolution, is it ever right ? 
340—2. 

Right, a, defined, 244 — 6 ; con- 
natural, acquired, alienable, 
inalienable, 246 ; one man's 
right imports another man's 
duty, but not conversely, 
246 — 7 ; not all rights conse- 
quences of duties, 247 — 8 ; not 
wholly the creation of the 
State, 299, 300, 356. 

Ritual, needs regulation, 197. 

Rousseau, his Social Contract, 
297 — 307 ; his inalienable 
sovereignty of the people, 
329. 330, 339- 

Secrets, 232—3. 

Self-defence, differs from punish- 
ment and from vengeance, 
212, 30S — 9 ; a wrong maxim 
of the jurists, 352 ; duelling 
not self-defence, 222, 



INDEX. 



379 



Simulation and dissimulation, 
236—7. 

Sin, material and formal, 33 ; 
differs from vice, 70 ; some by- 
mere passion, other on prin- 
ciple, 93 — 4 ; spiritual sins, 
113; philosophical sin, iig, 
121, 125; sin alone properly 
unnatural, 130 — i ; entails 
punishment, 131 — 2, 174—6; 
grave and light, 107; forgive- 
ness of, an uncertainty in 
philosophy, 167 ; sin against 
God, crime against the State, 
172 — 3 ; atheism the abolition 
of sin, 364, 

Socialism, Collectivism and Syn- 
dicalism, 283 — 291 ; an endea- 
vour to supersede private 
virtue, 296. 

Soldier's death, 96. 

Spiritualism, 199, 200. 

State, individual not all blended 
in, 306 — 7, 355 — 6 ; definition 
of,3ii; anatural requisite, more 
than a necessity of nature, 
313 — 4 ; involves authority, to 
beobeyed,3i5 — 6,361 ; aperfect 
community, 315 ; commanded 
and commissioned by God, 
317 — 8, 325 ; a secular con- 
cern with a secular end, 354 
— 5 ; the' State and virtue., 
355' cf. 345. 34^; State and 
Church, 356 — 7 ; State and 
education, 35S — 9 ; doctrines 
dangerous to the State, 364; 
State and Conscience, 368—9 ; 
remotely a judge of sin, but 
does not panish it as such, 
350. 

Stoics, would extirpate passion, 
44 ; their naturae convoiientey 
vivere, 112, 184; a paradox of 
theirs, 167. 

Suarez, explains the natural 
rise of civil authority, neglects 
the historical, 337. 

Suicide, 213 — 9. 

Supernatural, 21 — 4. 



Superstitious practices, 198 — 9. 
Synderesis, 137, 146. 

Temperance, 90 — i. 
Testamentary right, 2S2. 

Usury, defined, 257 — 8 ; prin- 
ciple upon v/hich it is wrong, 
256, 258 — 9; commercial loans 
not usurious, gradual opening 
for such, 259 — 263. 

Utilitarianism, 177 sq. ; an ill- 
concerted blend of Hedonism 
and Altruism, 180. 

Value, use value, market value, 
255—6, 283. 

Vice and Virtue, habits, not 
acts, 69, 70; not in children, 
70; vice not sin, 70, 160 — i. 

Virtue, a habit, 69, 70 ; not re- 
ducible to knowledge, 70 — i ; 
intellectual and moral, 70, 73; 
how moral and intellectual 
virtues differ, 73—6 ; need of 
moral virtue, 72, 75—6 ; moral 
virtue (not theological) ob- 
serves the mean, 77 — 84 ; car- 
dinal virtues, 84 — 7 ; are the 
virtues separable ? 89, 90 ; 
potential parts of a virtue, 92 ; 
sense of virtue necessary to 
national greatness, 94 ; virtue 
not 'another man's good,' 103, 
188 ; how differing from art, 
185 — 6 ; how far the care of 
the State, 355. 

Virtuous man, acts on motives 
of virtue, 71, 96 — 7, 184 — 5. 

War, the self-defence of nations, 
351 ; not a punitive opera- 
tion, 351 — 2-; direct and proper 
object, not to kill but to put 
out of action, 352 — 3. 

Wild boy of Hanover, 135. 

Worship, interior and exterior, 
reasons for the latter, 191 — 5 ; 
not as useful to God, but be- 
cause He is worthy of it, 195 
—6. 



STONYHURST PHILOSOPHICAL SERIES. 



Extract from a Letter of His Holiness tiie Pope to the DisJiop of 
Salford, on the Philosophical Course at Stonyhiirst. 

" You will easily understand, Venerable Brother, the pleasure We felt in 
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namely, that by the efforts of the Superiors of this College, an excellent 
course of the exact sciences has been successfully set on foot, bv establishing 
professorships, and by publishing in the vernacular for their students text- 
books of Philosophy, following the principles of St. Thomas Aquinas. On 
this work We earnestly congratulate tlie Superiors and teachers of the 
College, and by letter We wish affectionately to express Our good-will 
towards them. " 



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